THE    CIRCUS 

AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 
AND  FUGITIVE  PIECES 


JOYCE  KILMER 


Uniform  with  this  Volume 


JOYCE  KILMER:  Poems,  Essays 
and  Letters 

Edited  with  a  Memoir  by 
ROBERT   CORTES   HOLLIDAY 

VOLUME  ONE: 

MEMOIR  AND  POEMS 

VOLUME  Two: 

PROSE   WORKS 


THE    CIRCUS 

AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 
AND  FUGITIVE  PIECES 


BY 

JOYCE  KILMER 

EDITED  WITH   INTRODUCTION  BY 
ROBERT  CORTES  HOLLIDAY 


NEW  >€BJr  YORK 
GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 


Copyright,  1921, 
By  George  H.  Doran  Company 


Copyright,  1916,  by  Laurence  J.  Gomme 
PRINTED  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  or  AMERICA. 


TO 

ALINE  KILMER 


590556 


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

Credit  is  gratefully  accorded  the  New  York 
Times,  America,  Contemporary  Verse,  and  Poetry: 
A  Magazine  of  Verse,  for  permission  to  reprint 
several  of  the  pieces  collected  in  this  volume. 
For  the  privilege  of  reprinting  poems  quoted  by 
Kilmer  in  his  articles  and  lectures,  acknowledgment 
is  made  to  the  following  publishers:  E.  P.  Dutton 
&  Company,  Dodd,  Mead  and  Company,  Charles 
Scribner's  Sons,  John  Lane  Company,  The  Mac- 
millan  Company,  Methuen  and  Company,  Boni 
and  Liveright,  and  Burns  and  Gates.  And  the  per 
mission  of  George  Sterling  is  greatly  appreciated 
for  the  right  to  reproduce  his  three  sonnets  on 
Oblivion.  The  article  on  Thomas  Hardy,  pre 
pared  as  the  Introduction  to  the  Modern  Library 
Edition  of  "The  Mayor  of  Casterbridge,"  is  re 
produced  by  special  arrangement  with  Boni  and 
Liveright.  The  publishers  of  "Warner's  Library 
of  the  World's  Best  Literature"  have  courteously 


Vll 


viii  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

extended  permission  to  reprint  here  the  four 
essays,  originally  written  for  that  work,  which  con 
clude  this  volume. 

R.  C.  H. 

New  York,  1921. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

INTRODUCTION  BY  ROBERT  CORTES  HOLLIDAY 13 

THE  CIRCUS,  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

THE    CIRCUS 45 

THE  ABOLITION  OF  POETS. 60 

NOON-HOUR    ADVENTURING 70 

SIGNS  AND  SYMBOLS 83 

THE  GREAT  NICKEL  ADVENTURE 88 

THE  URBAN  CHANTICLEER 96 

DAILY    TRAVELING 105 

INCONGRUOUS  NEW  YORK 110 

IN  MEMORIAM  :   JOHN  BUNNY 116 

THE  DAY  AFTER  CHRISTMAS 125 

FUGITIVE  PIECES 

THE  ASHMAN 137 

THE  BEAR  THAT  WALKS  LIKE  A  MAN 146 

ABSINTHE  AT  THE  CHESHIRE  CHEESE 153 

JAPANESE   LACQUER * 159 

SAPPHO  REDIVIVA 168 

THE  POETRY  OF  GERARD  HOPKINS 180 

PHILOSOPHICAL  TENDENCIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE  186 
Two  LECTURES  ON  ENGLISH  POETRY: 

THE  BALLAD 197 

THE    SONNET >  .  203 

GILBERT  K.  CHESTERTON  AND  His  POETRY 222 

ix 


x  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

LIONEL  JOHNSON,  ERNEST  DOWSON,  AUBREY  BEARDS- 
LEY  ,.., 237 

SWINBURNE  AND  FRANCIS  THOMPSON 253 

A  NOTE  ON  THOMAS  HARDY.  .....  .i 268 

MADISON  JULIUS  CAWEIN. 275 

FRANCIS  THOMPSON 282 

JOHN   MASEFIELD 288 

WILLIAM  VAUGHN  MOODY.  .                      ...          . .  302 


INTRODUCTION 


INTRODUCTION 


SINCE  last  I  took  up  my  pen  in  the  service  of 
my  friend  who  on  July  30,  1918,  laid  down  his 
sword  in  the  service  of  his  country,  fame,  and  yet 
greater  fame,  has  been  busy  with  his  name.  Any 
further  eulogy  by  my  hand  would  have  only  the 
point  of  being  altogether  superfluous  and  the  fool 
ish  effect  of  being  very  much  at  the  rear  of  the  sit 
uation.  Further,  the  story  of  Joyce  Kilmer,  doubt 
less  in  very  fair  measure,  is  known  to  nearly  every 
one.  An  account  of  his  career  is  not  to  be  appre 
ciably  elaborated  here. 

There  are,  however,  some  facts  in  explanation  of 
the  appearance  of  this  volume  at  this  time  which 
require  to  be  set  down.  And  a  number  of  circum 
stances  in  relation  to  the  material  here  collected 
may  be  told,  I  think,  to  general  interest.  With 
these  matters  I  am  probably  as  familiar  as  anyone, 
and  so  have  the  great  privilege  of  undertaking  to 
record  them. 

[18] 


INTRODUCTION 

The  ten  highly  humorous  and  altogether  charm 
ing  essays  which  form  the  first  part  of  this  volume 
have  led  a  rather  queer  life  so  far — though  I  think 
their  existence  will  be  a  very  happy  one  from  now 
on.  First,  they  were  not  "essays"  at  the  time  of 
their  birth.  They  came  into  the  world  as  "articles." 
So  they  were  spoken  of  by  the  young  journalist 
who  at  various  times  and  with  very  little  to  do 
about  the  matter  wrote  them  in  the  course  of  a 
bewildering  variety  of  other  activities.  Or,  to  be 
still  more  frank,  he  was  perhaps  more  apt  to  refer 
to  them,  when  he  did  refer  to  them  at  all,  as  "Sun 
day  stories,"  done  as  a  part  of  his  job  with  the  New 
York  Times  Sunday  Magazine.  What  they  were 
called,  however,  is  neither  here  nor  there.  The 
thing  is  that  they  are  here. 

At  the  time  they  were  offered  for  book  publica 
tion  their  author,  then  about  thirty  years  of  age, 
was  well  established  as  the  author  of  "Trees  and 
Other  Poems" — poems  which  had  been  appearing 
for  some  time  in  various  publications,  collected  and 
issued  in  book  form  in  1914.  He  had  been  for 
several  years  a  conspicuous  figure  and  an  inval 
uable  worker  in  the  Poetry  Society  of  America  and 
the  Dickens  Fellowship.  He  was  a  member  of  the 
Authors  Club,  and  several  other  organizations.  He 
[14] 


INTRODUCTION 

had  been  a  lexicographer  and  an  associate  magazine 
editor.  He  was  a  "star"  book  reviewer,  conducted 
the  Poetry  Department  of  The  Literary  Digest, 
associated  much  with  literary  celebrities,  and  ap 
peared  in  Who's  Who.  The  point  I  am  getting  at 
is  that  he  had  a  good  deal  of  what  is  called  a 


"name." 


Satan  finds  mischief  for  idle  hands  to  do.  I  sup 
pose  that  is  why  the  thought  occurred  to  Joyce  to 
get  out  a  book  of  prose.  So,  as  the  professional 
literary  term  has  it,  he  "pasted  up"  ten  of  his 
articles — that  is,  cut  them  out  of  the  newspaper  and 
stuck  them  column  width  down  the  middle  of  sheets 
of  "copy"  paper.  He  typed  a  title  page,  "The 
Circus  and  Other  Essays,"  and  submitted  his 
manuscript  to  a  publisher.  It  was  promptly 
"turned  down."  Joyce  again  did  up  his  manuscript, 
gummed  on  some  fresh  stamps,  and  again  away  it 
went  to  another  leading  publishing  house.  And — 
well,  and  so  on.  I  do  not  know  precisely  how  many 
times  this  manuscript  was  submitted  for  publica 
tion  ;  but  I  know  it  was  a  number,  a  good  number, 
of  times. 

That,  however,  "The  Circus"  seemed  likely  not 
to  find  any  publisher  at  all  at  that  time  is  not 
a  matter  for  anything  like  astonishment.  Not 

[15] 


INTRODUCTION 

when  one  bears  in  mind  a  publishing  hobgoblin  of 
the  day.  The  book  was  labeled  "essays"  and  there 
fore  damned.  And  here,  perhaps,  it  may  not  be 
too  irrelevant  to  take  a  brief  glance  at  the  whole 
history  of  this  mysterious  thing,  the  light,  familiar 
essay  in  English.  In  the  Augustan  age  of  English 
prose,  we  remember,  appeared  the  easy,  graceful 
style  of  Steele  and  Addison,  so  admirably  suited  to 
the  pleasant  narrative  form  of  essay  which  they  in 
troduced.  And  in  the  nineteenth  century  in  Eng 
land,  when  Johnson  and  Goldsmith  were  followed 
by  Lamb,  Hazlitt,  De  Quincey,  Leigh  Hunt,  Ma- 
caulay,  Carlyle,  Ruskin  and  all  the  rest,  the  essay 
certainly  appears  to  have  been,  so  to  say,  very 
much  the  go. 

Irving,  Emerson,  Thoreau,  Hawthorne,  Lowell, 
Holmes — certainly  our  fathers  were  not  afraid  of 
essays.  Nevertheless,  somewhere  about  the  open 
ing  of  our  own  day  an  iron-bound  tradition  became 
erected  in  the  publishing  business,  at  least  in  the 
United  States,  that  books  of  essays  would  not  sell; 
could  not  be  made  to  sell  even  sufficiently  to  avoid 
a  considerable  loss  on  the  investment  of  manufac 
ture;  in  fact,  were  quite  impossible  as  a  publishing 
venture.  No  matter  how  much  a  publisher  him 
self,  or  his  manuscript  reader,  might  enjoy  a  col- 
[16] 


INTRODUCTION 

lection  of  essays  that  chanced  to  turn  up  in  his 
shop,  his  conviction  as  to  its  unmarketability  as  a 
book  was  not  altered — not  even  stirred.  A  few,  a 
very  few,  essayists  there  were,  indeed,  who  got  pub 
lished.  Agnes  Repplier  and  Samuel  McChord 
Crothers  most  prominent,  perhaps,  among  them. 
But  these  writers  had  somehow  got  established  as 
essayists.  They  were  found  on  the  lists  only  of  a 
house  with  peculiarly  "literary"  traditions,  which 
it  was  business  policy  to  capitalize  and  perpetuate 
for  the  sake  of  the  firm's  "imprint."  I  have  heard 
scoffers  among  publishers  ask  if  "anybody  outside 
of  New  England"  bought  the  books  of  these  writ 
ers.  Maybe  their  prime  function  was,  in  the  pub 
lishing  term,  to  "dress  the  list."  The  volumes  of 
essays  by  Dr.  Henry  van  Dyke,  I  know  from  ex 
perience  as  a  bookseller,  sold  in  popular  measure. 
And  now  and  then  a  volume  of  collected  papers 
by,  say,  Meredith  Nicholson  would  bob  up  for  a 
short  space  of  time.  But  such  instances  as  these 
did  not  affect  the  general  situation. 

In  general,  when  the  manuscript  of  "The  Circus" 
was  "going  the  rounds"  it  was  (supposedly)  eco 
nomic  madness,  at  any  rate  professional  heresy,  not 
to  regard  books  of  essays  as  what  the  trade  terms 
"plugs,"  and  a  drug  on  the  market.  Doubtless, 

[17] 


INTRODUCTION 

the  publishing  position  in  this  matter  was  evolved 
from  cumulative  facts  of  experience  in  the  past. 
But  a  screw  was  loose  somewhere.  The  publishing 
barometer  had,  it  would  seem,  failed  to  note  a 
change  in  the  weather  of  the  public  mind. 

That  "The  Circus"  would  not  have  made  a  fair 
ly  popular  book  at  the  time  it  was  first  submitted 
for  publication,  it  seems  to  me,  there  is  a  good  deal 
of  reason  to  believe  was  a  fallacy.  Not  a  couple  of 
years  afterward  a  collection  of  random  articles  in 
general  character  not  dissimilar  to  "The  Circus," 
by  another  young  man  of  greatly  likable  nature, 
but  then  practically  unknown  outside  the  circle  of 
his  personal  friends,  was  in  some  idiosyncratic 
moment  accepted,  and  directly  won  its  way  to  a 
very  considerable  sale  and  a  very  fair  degree  of 
fame.  About  then,  too,  along  came  another  book 
of  pasted-up  "papers"  (about  which  I  happen  to 
know  a  good  deal),  which  after  having  been  re 
jected  by  nearly  every  publishing  house  in  America 
was  taken  in  a  spirit  of  generous  friendliness  by  a 
publisher  of  much  enterprise,  began  almost  at  once 
to  sell  as  well  as  a  fairly  successful  novel,  has  been 
numerous  times  reprinted,  and  in  the  way  of  luck 
brought  its  altogether  obscure  author  something  of 
a  name.  And  just  now  the  light,  personal,  journal- 
[18] 


INTRODUCTION 

istic-literary  essay  is  having  quite  a  brisk  vogue. 

If  Joyce  stood  to-day  merely  where  he  stood  five 
years  ago  "The  Circus/'  without  doubt,  would  be 
snapped  up  by  anybody.  More;  some  publisher's 
"scout"  very  likely  would  get  a  "hunch"  about  the 
probability  of  Joyce's  having  sufficient  material  in 
his  scrap-book  for  such  a  volume  and  "go  after"  it 
even  before  Joyce  had  submitted  it  to  the  house  of 
this  fellow's  connection.  But,  alas!  for  "ifs"  and 
"might  have  beens."  Fair  fortune  did  not  attend 
"The  Circus." 

Failing  of  placing  the  book  with  any  large  house 
having  an  extensive  and  organized  machinery  for 
carrying  it  to  a  wide  audience,  Joyce  welcomed  the 
opportunity  of  having  the  book  published  by  his 
friend  Laurence  J.  Gomme.  Mr.  Gomme  had  been 
for  several  years  the  proprietor  of  the  Little  Book 
Shop  Around  the  Corner,  at  number  two  East 
Twenty-ninth  Street,  directly  across  the  street 
from  the  Protestant  Episcopal  Church  of  the 
Transfiguration,  so  altogether  charming  in  its  Old 
World  effect,  nestling  in  a  tiny  green  spot  hemmed 
in  by  high  buildings,  and  known  to  fame  and  legend 
as  the  Little  Church  Around  the  Corner.  This 
was  a  shop  conducted  in  excellent  taste,  a  sort  of 
salon  for  pleasant  persons  of  literary  breeding,  and 

[19] 


INTRODUCTION 

its  "circulars"  were  written  by  no  less  an  advertis 
ing  man  than  Richard  Le  Gallienne.  In  addition 
to  selling  the  best  books  of  other  publishers,  Mr. 
Gomme  (at  a  good  deal  of  risk  to  himself)  served 
the  cause  of  good  literature  by  himself  issuing  now 
and  then  a  volume  of  a  nature  close  to  his  heart. 

In  the  autumn  of  1916  he  published,  in  a  very 
attractive  form,  the  American  edition  of  Mr.  Bel- 
loc's  poems.  The  volume  was  entitled  "Verses,"  by 
Hilaire  Belloc.  The  introduction  to  the  book  by 
Kilmer  was  reprinted  in  the  two  volume  set,  "Joyce 
Kilmer:  Poems,  Essays  and  Letters,"  under  the 
title  "The  Poetry  of  Hilaire  Belloc."  That  same 
fall  Mr.  Gomme  published  "The  Circus  and  Other 
Essays."  He  made  a  charming  little  book:  a  thin 
volume  in  size  betwixt  and  between  what  the  book 
trade  calls  a  "16mo"  volume  and  a  duodecimo; 
bound  in  plain  tan  boards,  with  olive  cloth  back 
stamped  in  gold;  very  neatly  printed  on  soft  cream 
paper  in  rather  small  type.  The  book  had  a  rather 
fantastically  amusing  and  somewhat  lurid  "jacket," 
picturing  in  black  and  yellow  the  professional  ac 
tivities  of  several  clowns. 

A  very  pleasant  bibelot,  but,  I  felt  then,  not  a 
volume  effective  in  catching  the  popular  trade. 
For  one  thing,  it  looked  very  much  like  it  might 
[20] 


INTRODUCTION 

be  a  book  of  verse.  Also,  the  book  was  so  thin  that 
one  would  not  be  likely  to  catch  sight  of  it  standing 
among  other  volumes  in  a  row  on  a  bookstore 
shelf. 

Mr.  Gomme's  means  as  a  publisher  at  that  time 
did  not  permit  him  to  give  the  book  any  paid  ad 
vertising;  it  had  no  campaign  whatever  of  free  pub 
licity  behind  it.  Nor  had  the  publisher  any  travel 
ing  salesmen  to  show  the  book  to  dealers  over  the 
country.  He  merely  "covered"  New  York  City 
himself  in  the  interests  of  the  volumes  he  issued. 
Indeed,  one  would  not  be  making  a  hilarious  exag 
geration  in  saying  that  "The  Circus"  was  semi- 
"privately  printed." 

A  fair  number  of  copies  of  the  book  were  sent 
out  for  review.  And  here  is  a  very  interesting 
thing.  The  book,  as  has  been  said,  was  decidedly 
insignificant  in  bulk.  It  was  published  at  a  time 
when  the  assumption  prevailed  that  there  was  no 
appreciable  public  for  volumes  of  essays;  and  con 
sequently,  the  inference  would  be,  the  publication 
of  such  a  book  was  quite  without  news  value.  Fur 
ther,  it  was  issued  at  a  period  when  newsprint  paper 
was  appallingly  scarce,  newspaper  space  rigorously 
conserved,  and  the  war  engrossing  public  attention. 
There  was,  too,  as  we  have  seen,  nothing  about  the 

[21] 


INTRODUCTION 

launching  of  "The  Circus"  to  tempt  any  literary 
editor  or  reviewer  to  believe  that  the  book  was  of 
any  consequence  whatever.  Indeed,  half  a  "stick" 
of  fairly  favorable  comment  here  and  there  would 
have  been  all  that  anybody  could  reasonably  have 
expected  in  the  way  of  a  "press."  But,  as  a  mat 
ter  of  fact,  all  in  all  the  book  got  a  surprising 
amount  of  space  in  the  papers,  and  was  awarded 
the  dignity  of  thoughtful  appreciation.  The  New 
York  Evening  Post  devoted  half  the  front  page  of 
its  book  review  section  to  an  article,  which  was  con 
tinued  through  a  column  of  another  page,  to  "The 
Circus"  and  another  book  of  essays  with  which  it 
was  grouped. 

Shortly  after  the  publication  of  "The  Circus"  the 
difficulties  of  the  business  of  bookselling  and  pub 
lishing  at  this  time  forced  Mr.  Gomme  to  close  out 
his  business.  And  for  a  period  his  affairs  were 
very  much  involved.  His  stock  in  hand  was  scat 
tered,  and  before  long  his  recent  publications  be 
came  exceedingly  difficult  to  obtain.  A  couple  of 
years  after  the  date  of  its  imprint,  Mr.  Belloc,  in 
the  course  of  correspondence  which  I  had  with  him 
mainly  relating  to  other  matters,  repeatedly  be 
sought  me  to  obtain  for  him  a  copy  of  his  "Verses," 
the  volume  containing  Kilmer's  introduction.  In- 
[22] 


INTRODUCTION 

deed,  he  was  apparently  much  put  out  by  the  fact 
that,  as  he  expressed  it,  he  had  never  even  seen  a 
copy  of  the  American  edition  of  his  poems.  I  had 
more  than  a  little  difficulty  in  finding  a  copy  to 
send  to  him.  This  he  never  received.  With  some 
petulance  he  laid  its  loss  to  the  German  submarines, 
which  he  declared  sank  everything  that  was  being 
sent  to  him.  I  found  the  trail  to  another  copy  of 
"Verses"  still  more  elusive;  and,  to  tell  the  truth, 
I  really  don't  know  whether  or  not  I  got  another 
copy  off  to  him.  This  story  is  to  show  that  anyone 
who  has  a  copy  of  that  book  now  has  a  volume  far 
from  readily  found. 

Copies  of  the  original  edition  of  "The  Circus" 
are  somewhat  easier  to  lay  hold  of.  Doubt 
less,  though,  they  will  soon  be  scarce,  as  the 
original  edition  could  not  have  been  large.  And 
the  book  will  not  be  reprinted  in  its  first  form. 
With  all  the  untoward  circumstances  of  its  publica 
tion,  however,  "The  Circus"  did  seem  to  find  its 
way  to  no  mean  circle  of  friends.  When  the  me 
morial  volumes,  "Joyce  Kilmer:  Poems,  Essays 
and  Letters,"  were  published  in  the  autumn  of 
1918,  numerous  inquiries  were  received  by  the  pub 
lishers  as  to  why  the  essays  which  comprised  the 
volume  "The  Circus"  were  not  included.  The  ex- 

[23] 


INTRODUCTION 

planation  is  this:  In  the  continuance  of  the  en 
tanglement  of  the  affairs  of  Mr.  Gomme's  former 
business  no  clear  title  to  the  rights  of  this  book 
was  at  that  time  in  sight.  Since  then  these  mat 
ters  have  all  been  straightened  out,  and,  I  am 
happy  to  be  able  to  say,  this  excellent  friend  of 
Joyce  Kilmer  is  again  in  circumstances  more  aus 
picious  than  before,  and  with  joy  to  his  fine  heart, 
effectively  serving  the  cause  of  good  books. 

In  direct  critical  appreciation  of  these  ten  essays 
there  is  not  much  that  I  care  to  say.  They  were 
written  by  my  friend,  and  are  therefore  holy.  That 
is,  of  course,  to  me.  They  may  be  charged  with 
being  very  youthful.  Aye;  even  so. 

For  ever  warm  and  still  to  be  enjoy'd, 
For  ever  panting  and  for  ever  young. 

Their  youthfulness  is  to  me  a  thing  of  very  poign 
ant,  tender  beauty.  I  see  again  that  radiant  boy, 
trailing  clouds  of  glory  come  from  God  who  was 
his  home.  His  childhood  spent  in  "a  town  less  than 
a  hundred  miles  from  New  York,"  "now  he  feels 
himself  actually  a  New  Yorker,"  "enjoys  the  proud 
novelty  of  working  for  wages,"  and  "joyfully, 
therefore,  he  goes  forth  every  noon  to  explore  the 
[24] 


INTRODUCTION 

territory  of  his  new  possession."  The  subway  was 
to  him  "the  great  nickel  adventure";  a  ride  on  the 
elevated  railroad,  "aerial  journeying";  his  alarm 
clock,  "the  urban  chanticleer."  Again,  as  a  com 
muter,  I  see  him  on  the  5.24,  flying  across  "leagues" 
to  his  cottage  in  the  "primeval  forest"  of  New  Jer 
sey.  On  his  "red  velvet  chair"  he  sits,  "enjoying 
with  his  neighbors  tobacco  smoke,  rapid  travel,  and 
the  news  of  the  world."  None  ever  enjoyed  these 
things  more,  red  velvet  chair  and  all! 

The  connection  which  I  may  boast  of  having 
with  the  writing  of  some  of  these  essays  illustrates 
in  an  amusing  way  the  pleasantly  pugnacious  char 
acter  of  Joyce's  mind.  Joyce  held  that  I  was  of 
fensively  sesthetic  in  regarding  sign-boards  about 
the  countryside  as  ugly  things.  "Signs  and  Sym 
bols"  was  his  hilarious  and  scornful  rebuke.  "The 
Gentle  Art  of  Christmas  Giving"  (a  New  York 
Times  article  reprinted  in  the  two-volume  set)  had 
a  similar  origin.  You  remember  with  what  amus 
ing  gusto  it  begins: 

If  a  dentist  stuck  a  bit  of  holly  in  his  cap  and 
went  through  the  streets  on  Christmas  morning,  his 
buzzing  drill  over  his  shoulder  and  his  forceps  in 
his  hand,  stopping  at  the  houses  of  his  friends  to 
give  their  jaws  free  treatment,  meanwhile  trolling 

[25] 


INTRODUCTION 

out  lusty  Yuletide  staves — if  he  were  to  do  this, 
I  say,  it  would  be  said  of  him,  among  other  things, 
that  he  was  celebrating  Christmas  in  a  highly  orig 
inal  manner.  Undoubtedly  there  would  be  many 
other  adjectives  applied  to  his  manner  of  generosity 
— adjectives  applied,  for  instance,  by  the  children 
whom,  around  their  gayly  festooned  tree,  he  sur 
prised  with  his  gift  of  expert  treatment.  But  the 
adjective  most  generally  used  (not  perhaps  in  adu 
lation)  would  be  "original."  And  the  use  of  this 
adjective  would  be  utterly  wrong. 

The  holly-bedecked  dentist  would  not  be  acting 
in  the  original  manner.  He  would  be  following  the 
suggestion  of  his  own  philanthropic  heart.  He 
would  be  acting  in  accordance  with  tradition,  a  par 
ticularly  annoying  tradition,  the  evil  and  absurd 
superstition  that  a  gift  should  be  representative  of 
the  giver  rather  than  of  the  recipient. 

That  "particularly  annoying  tradition,"  that  "evil 
and  absurd  superstition,"  I  had  been  guilty  of  voic 
ing  a  few  days  before  he  wrote  this  article.  He 
looked  at  me  with  withering  commiseration. 

If,  in  the  days  when  he  was  writing  the  essays 
of  "The  Circus,"  Joyce  had  the  effect  of  being 
ridiculously  young,  he  was  also  (with  affection  I 
say  it)  ridiculously  wise  for  his  years.  I  can  hear 
the  sturdy  sound  of  his  voice  in  the  phrase  (in  the 
essay  "The  Abolition  of  Poets"),  "those  ridiculous 
[26] 


INTRODUCTION 

young  people  who  call  themselves  Imagists  and 
Vorticists  and  similar  queer  names."  And  what 
joyous  satire  here: 

And  there  is  Zipp,  the  What-is-it?  most  vener 
able  of  freaks,  whose  browless  tufted  head  and 
amazing  figure  have  entertained  his  visitors  since 
Phineas  Taylor  Barnum  engaged  him  to  ornament 
his  museum  on  Ann  Street.  For  all  I  know,  Zipp 
is  a  poet — his  smile  is  lyrical,  and  in  his  roving  eyes 
there  is  a  suggestion  of  vers  libre. 

Then,  with  the  mellow  humor  of  paternal  experi 
ence  he  discusses  (in  "The  Day  After  Christmas") 
that  hypothetical  person  who  is  three,  and  who,  he 
regrets  to  say,  is  "somewhat  sticky";  who,  further, 
had  in  all  confidence  requested  Santa  Claus  to 
bring  him  a  large  live  baboon,  but  who  had  been 
brought  instead  a  small  tin  monkey  on  a  stick.  Or, 
again,  babies  who  at  somewhere  between  six  and 
eight  in  the  morning,  "seeing  that  their  weary  par 
ents  are  leaving  them,  decide  at  last  that  it  is  time 
to  go  to  sleep." 

And  even  then,  as  throughout  his  later  years,  he 
had  that  (manly  not  sentimental)  intuitive  sym 
pathy  for  those  by  fortune  afflicted.  In  "The 
Circus": 

[27] 


INTRODUCTION 

The  freaks  get  large  salaries  (they  seem  large  to 
poets ) ,  and  they  are  carefully  tended,  for  they  are 
delicate.  See,  here  is  a  man  who  lives  although  his 
back  is  broken.  There  is  a  crowd  around  him ;  how 
interested  they  are!  Would  they  be  as  interested 
in  a  poet  who  lived  although  his  heart  was  broken? 
Probably  not.  But  then,  there  are  not  many 
freaks. 

Nor  did  his  perception  of  sorrow  come  to  him  solely 
by  intuition.  Far  from  it.  No,  this  very  valiant 
and  very  young  man  himself  had  experienced  the 
fact  that  an  alarm  clock  "can  utter  harsh  and 
strident  grief,  those  know  who  lie  down  with  Sor 
row  and  must  awaken  with  her." 

To  me  there  is  something  indescribably  touch 
ing  even  in  Joyce's  most  hilarious  flights  of  fancy 
in  these  essays.  I  cannot  tell  you  why  this  is  so. 
Perhaps  it  is  because  his  jocund  humor,  like  all 
else,  sprang  from  a  heart  so  woven  of  the  common 
strands  of  humanity. 

When  Adam  watched  with  pleased  astonishment 
an  agile  monkey  leap  among  the  branches  of  an 
Eden  tree,  and  laughed  at  the  foolish  face  of  a 
giraffe,  he  saw  a  circus.  Delightedly  now  would  he 
sit  upon  a  rickety  chair  beneath  a  canvas  roof,  smell 
the  romantic  aroma  of  elephant  and  trampled 
grass,  and  look  at  wonders. 
128] 


INTRODUCTION 

The  most  obvious  thing,  of  course,  about  these 
essays  is  their  Chestertonian  spirit  and  manner.  In 
the  matter  of  the  manner,  Mr.  Chesterton's  trick  of 
"reverse  English,"  to  employ  the  billiard  player's 
term,  take  this: 

It  would  be  the  mere  prose  of  our  daily  life  for 
birds  to  fly  about  close  to  the  tent's  roof,  and  for 
men  and  women  to  ring  bells  and  sit  in  rocking 
chairs.  It  is  the  poetry  of  the  circus  that  men  and 
women  fly  about  close  to  the  tent's  roof,  and  birds 
ring  bells  and  sit  in  rocking  chairs. 

Or,  for  both  manner  and  spirit,  this: 

By  faith  the  walls  of  Jericho  fell  down.  By  faith 
the  Eight  Algerian  Aerial  Equilibrists  stayed  up. 

Indeed,  the  whole  fundamental  temper  of  the  book 
— its  glorification  (almost  deification)  of  everyday 
things;  its  militant  persistence  in  running  counter 
to  dull  acceptance  of  current  ideas;  its  sleight-of- 
hand  dexterity  in  bringing  a  thing  to  life  by  stand 
ing  it  on  its  head — is  Chestertonian.  And  right 
there  is  the  point.  Anybody,  almost,  can  copy,  or 
parody,  Mr.  Chesterton's  manner.  But  Kilmer's 
Chestertonism  was  nothing  of  a  superficial  imita 
tion.  He  was  at  heart  quite  Chestertonian  himself. 

[29] 


INTRODUCTION 

What  is  still  more  to  the  point :  He  was,  so  to  put 
it,  more  Chestertonian  than  even  Mr.  Chesterton. 
That  is,  one  cannot  but  feel  that  for  some  consid 
erable  time  Mr.  Chesterton  has  been  more  or  less 
mechanically  imitating  himself.  But  Kilmer's  rol 
licking  pages  have  on  them  the  tender  bloom  of  the 
natural  fruit. 

And  they  reek  with  the  articles  of  his  creed — are 
punctuated  with  the  touchstones  by  which  he  guided 
his  life.  Three  words  are  most  often  repeated  in 
these  essays.  They  occur  again  and  again,  one  or 
more  of  them  on  nearly  every  page.  These  words, 
you  cannot  fail  to  note,  are:  faith,  mirth,  and 
democracy. 

II 

The  poem,  "The  Ashman,"  which  opens  the 
second  part  of  this  book,  was  not  included  in 
the  collected  set  of  Kilmer's  poems,  essays  and  let 
ters  for  the  reason  that  it  was  overlooked  at  the 
time  those  volumes  were  being  prepared  for  pub 
lication.  The  poem  was  supplied  for  this  volume 
by  Charles  Wharton  Stork,  in  whose  magazine, 
"Contemporary  Verse,"  it  originally  appeared. 

Among  Kilmer's  papers  I  have  found  a  type 
written  memorandum  which  shows  that  he  contem- 
[30] 


INTRODUCTION 

plated  collecting  into  a  volume  the  fugitive  pieces 
here  reprinted.  This  is  the  memorandum: 

LITERARY  ADVENTURES 

(1)  Absinthe  at  The  Cheshire  Cheese;  a  considera 

tion  of  Ernest  Dowson  and  his  times. 
(America  pasted  up — Times  Book  Review 
to  be  obtained) 

(2)  Japanese  Lacquer;  an  attempt  to  solve  the 

Lafcadio  Hearn  riddle  (pasted  up) 

(3)  SAPPHO  REDIVIVA  (pasted  up) 

(4)  RABINDRANATH  TAGORE  AND  THE  NEO-MYS- 

TICS  (pasted  up) 

(5)  THE  BEAR  THAT  WALKS  LIKE  A  MAN;  Some 

aspects  of  the  Russian  novel  fad    (pasted 
up) 

(6)  FRANCIS  THOMPSON  (pasted  up) 

(7) 

I  do  not  know  that  anything  especial  need  be  said 
concerning  these  articles.  They  are  exceedingly 
lively  bits  of  journalistic  literary  criticism,  highly 
entertaining  in  their  exhibition  of  Kilmer's  pet  aver 
sions,  which,  after  all,  sprang  from  his  manly  com 
mon  sense.  In  a  letter  written  at  about  the  time  of 
these  articles  Joyce  says:  "My  chief  pleasure  in 
writing  is  to  attempt  to  expose  the  absurdity  of 
very  modern  writers — materialists,  feminists,  Zola- 
ists  and  all  the  rest  of  the  foolish  crew." 

[31] 


INTRODUCTION 

As  interesting  examples  of  Kilmerana,  several 
representative  lectures  conclude  this  book.  At  the 
time  Joyce  entered  the  army  his  lecturing  activities 
had  become  pretty  extensive.  He  makes  frequent 
reference  to  his  lecture  work  in  his  correspondence 
of  the  time.  In  a  letter  written  in  September, 
1915,  he  says,  "I  can't  make  a  spring  tour — be 
cause  in  February  or  March  we're  going  to  have 
another  baby,  I'm  glad  to  say."  Further  on  in  this 
same  communication,  to  the  Reverend  James  J. 
Daly,  S.  J.,  he  writes:  "You  see,  I  don't  want  to 
go  into  lecturing  on  so  extensive  a  scale  as  Dr. 
Walsh.  I  have  my  regular  work  to  attend  to,  and 
I'd  rather  not  take  more  than  three  weeks  off  at  a 
time.  And  I  don't  want  to  lecture  too  often.  I 
have  not  Dr.  Walsh's  readiness.  I  prepare  my  lec 
tures  carefully,  writing  them  out  like  essays,  and 
memorizing  them  so  thoroughly  that  they  give,  I 
believe,  the  impression  that  they  are  spoken  ex 
tempore."  In  another  letter  of  about  this  time  he 
speaks  of  his  "new  profession" — "monologue  artist 
in  one  night  stands."  In  one  letter  he  speaks  of  a 
lecture,  manuscript  of  which  I  have  been  unable  to 
find,  as  follows: 

The  lecture  which  I  especially  desire  to  give  at 
Campion  this  year  is  "The  Poet  of  the  Pre- 
132] 


INTRODUCTION 

Raphaelite  Brotherhood  and  Their  Successors." 
This  is,  I  think,  a  better  lecture  than  "Swinburne 
and  Francis  Thompson."  It  is  an  attempt  to  show 
how  Patmore  (who  was  a  member  of  the  Pre-Raph 
aelite  Brotherhood,  a  friend  of  Rossetti  and  a  con 
tributor  to  The  Germ)  carried  the  theories  of  the 
Pre-Raphaelites  to  their  logical  conclusion,  that 
Rossetti  and  Christina  and  Morris  and  a  lot  of  that 
bunch  really  paved  the  way  for  Francis  Thompson 
and  Alice  Meynell  and  Katherine  Tynan  and  other 
modern  Catholic  poets,  by  writing  sympathetically, 
even  if  not  always  under  standingly,  on  Catholic 
themes.  Incidentally,  I  trace  "The  Hound  of 
Heaven"  back  through  "The  Blessed  Damozel"  to 
"The  Raven."  But  if  you  don't  want  that  lecture 
I'll  lecture  on  any  other  subject  you  may  elect — 
the  lighter  lyrics  of  James  J.  Daly,  for  example. 

In  another  letter  he  writes:  "Next  year  I  won't 
lecture  at  all;  I'll  just  recite  my  poems,  which  take 
better  than  the  lectures,  anyway.  I'm  going  on 
tour  with  Ellis  Parker  Butler,  the  Tigs  Is  Pigs' 
man,  and  we'll  have  a  regular  manager." 

And  again: 

I  am  glad  that  you  are  so  forgiving  as  to  be 
willing  to  have  me  at  Campion  on  the  twenty-sixth. 
Unless  I  am  commanded  to  the  contrary,  I  will 
give  "The  War  and  the  Poets"  at  the  College  and 

[33] 


INTRODUCTION 

"Francis  Thompson"  at  the  Convent.  "The  War 
and  the  Poets"  does  not  get  the  goats  of  hyphen 
ates  of  any  sort — I  gave  it  in  Toronto  and  in  Notre 
Dame.  Also  I  will  read  some  of  my  own  stuff, 
new  and  old,  at  both  of  these  lectures  unless  forc 
ibly  prevented. 

The  two  lectures  on  poetry,  "The  Ballad"  and 
"The  Sonnet,"  were  given  at  New  York  Univer 
sity,  and  were  to  have  been  parts  of  a  book  on  the 
art  of  versification,  which  the  University,  I  be 
lieve,  was  to  publish.  In  the  manuscript  of  these 
lectures  we  find  such  phrases  as  "this  book,"  and 
Joyce  referring  to  himself  here  as  "the  author  of  a 
textbook."  The  lecture  "The  Ballad"  as  here 
printed  is  incomplete,  as  the  typewritten  copy  of 
the  manuscript  which  came  into  my  hands,  and 
which  is  the  only  copy  I  know  to  be  in  existence, 
ends  thus: 

I  will  call  the  reader's  attention  to  the  work  of 
some  of  the  poets  who,  in  our  time,  have  been  prov 
ing  the  falsity  of  Sir  Arthur  Quiller- Couch's  state 
ment  that 

These  lectures  on  poetry  are  admirably  adapted 
to  their  end.  They  are  addressed  to  the  student, 
especially  "the  apprentices  of  the  craft  of  verse 
[34] 


INTRODUCTION 

making."  They  are  devoted  altogether  to  historical 
and  technical  matters.  And  in  the  earnestness  of 
his  conception  of  his  task  here  as  the  author  of  a 
textbook,  Joyce  has  very  rigorously  excluded  any 
thing  which  could  possibly  be  fancied  as  flippant. 
Just  as  sternly  has  he  refrained  from  allowing  to 
enter  his  discourse  any  particle  of  color  of  religious 
bias.  He  has  not,  however,  in  the  slightest  per 
mitted  his  independence  of  judgment  to  be  subdued 
in  his  interpretation  of  purely  literary  points.  So 
these  lectures  do  not  lack  for  vitality,  and  exhibit 
again,  in  a  less  known  manner  of  his  writing,  his 
exceptional  clarity  of  style. 

As  in  his  life,  so  in  his  writings.  Joyce  moved  in 
many  circles,  and  though  always  quite  himself,  so 
did  he,  too,  always  fit  where  he  found  himself.  An 
exceedingly  active  professional  writer,  he  was  called 
upon  to  write  for  various  audiences.  When  he  was 
entrusted  with  writing  the  articles  on  Madison 
Cawein,  Francis  Thompson,  John  Masefield,  and 
William  Vaughn  Moody  for  "Warner's  Library 
of  the  World's  Best  Literature,"  and  when  he  was 
invited  to  contribute  the  introductory  essay  to 
Thomas  Hardy's  novel  "The  Mayor  of  Caster- 
bridge"  in  "The  Modern  Library,"  he  was  to  ad 
dress  a  more  or  less  popular  audience  of  general 

[35] 


INTRODUCTION 

character,  and  he  did  that  with  ability  and  dis 
tinguished  literary  tact. 

Naturally,  Joyce  became  much  in  demand  as  a 
speaker  before  purely  Catholic  audiences.  And 
naturally  before  Roman  Catholic  schools,  colleges, 
universities  and  societies  he  loosed  the  spirit  of  his 
own  fervent  Catholicism.  Perhaps  it  will  occur  to 
some  readers  of  this  volume  who  may  not  be  Cath 
olics  that  such  lectures  as  "Lionel  Johnson,  Ernest 
Dowson,  Aubrey  Beardsley"  and  "Swinburne  and 
Francis  Thompson"  are  more  in  the  nature  of  briefs 
for  the  Catholic  Faith  than  they  are  of  the  charac 
ter  of  disinterested  literary  criticism.  I  do  not 
think  it  would  have  worried  Joyce  to  have  been  told 
so.  He  was  in  such  lectures  talking  what  was  to 
him  far  more  than  literature.  In  a  letter  of  his  be 
fore  me,  written  by  hand,  he  says,  "There  are  in 
the  universe  only  two  ecstasies.  One  is  receiving 
Holy  Communion."  The  other,  he  means,  is  his 
love  for  his  wife.  "Poetry,"  he  continues,  "is  not 
an  ecstasy,  but  it  is  a  delight,  a  shadow  and  an  echo 
of  the  two  ecstasies.  It  certainly  is  a  delight  to 
read  and  to  make." 

What,  to  his  mind,  was  the  use  of  writers,  any 
way?  In  the  lecture  "Philosophical  Tendencies  in 
[36] 


INTRODUCTION 

English  Literature"  he  tells  very  definitely  his  con 
viction  as  to  this: 

So  writers  may  fulfill  the  purpose  for  which  they 
were  made  by  writing — may  know  God  better  by 
writing  about  Him,  increase  their  love  of  Him  by 
expressing  it  in  beautiful  words,  serve  Him  in  this 
world  by  means  of  their  best  talent,  and  because  of 
this  service  and  His  mercy  be  happy  with  Him  for 
ever  in  Heaven. 

Ill 

Numerous  letters  written  by  Joyce  to  many 
of  his  friends,  and  kindly  loaned  by  their  own 
ers  to  the  publishers,  were  received  too  late  for  in 
clusion  in  the  two-volume  set  of  his  poems,  essays 
and  letters.  These  letters  continue  in  greater  de 
tail,  and  give  the  emphasis  of  cumulative  effect,  to 
the  portrait  of  a  beautiful  and  a  joyous  young  man 
hood  revealed  by  the  letters  which  were  printed. 
A  man  has  only  one  life  to  live  in  this  world,  but  (if 
he  is  anything  like  Kilmer)  many  friends.  And 
so  it  is  that  several  groups  of  letters  from  his  hand 
are  more  than  apt  to  tell,  with,  some  variations  in 
expression,  very  much  the  same  story.  Two  stout 
volumes  of  collected  letters  sometimes  are  compiled 
as  an  appropriate  part  of  the  literary  remains  of  a 

[37] 


INTRODUCTION 

notable  life.  Anything  approaching  such  a  bulk 
of  preserved  correspondence,  however,  can  only  be 
in  order  when  that  life  has  reflected  something  like 
three  or  four  times  the  number  of  working  years 
that  were  Kilmer's. 

Some  few  points  I  find  in  the  unpublished  letters 
which  may  be  new  to  many  of  Joyce's  readers.  In 
one  place  he  says,  referring  to  the  approaching 
publication  of  the  volume  which  was  issued  as 
"Trees  and  Other  Poems,"  "My  Book  is  to  appear 
next  October.  It  is  called  'The  Twelve-forty-five 
and  Other  Poems/  "  A  little  later  he  writes: 

I  wish  you'd  suggest  a  name  for  my  book.  In 
my  contract  it  is  called  "Trees  and  Other  Poems" 
but  I  don't  like  that;  it's  too  mild.  I  wanted  to  call 
it  "Delicatessen,"  since  it  contains  a  long  poem  of 
that  name,  but  the  publishers  think  that  name  too 
frivolous.  Then  I  suggested  "A  Rumbling  Wain" 
(after  the  third  and  fourth  lines  of  the  first  stanza 
of  Patmore's  "Angel  in  the  House")  but  that's  too 
obscure.  And  "The  12.45  and  Other  Poems"  is 
flat,  I  think.  If  you  select  a  title,  you  see,  you  can't 
roast  the  title  when  you  review  the  book  in  America! 

In  another  place:     "I  don't  like  the  book's  jacket 

at  all.    I  think  it  is  effeminate." 

[88] 


INTRODUCTION 

As  an  amusingly  frank  comment  on  his  own 
"stuff"  there  is  this: 

My  article  in was  somewhat  weak- 
minded.  Have  poor  Christmas  poem  in 

and  good  Christmas  poem  ($50. 00!!)  in . 

And  middling  Thanksgiving  poem  in  . 

And  trite  but  amiable  poem  about  English  univer 
sity  at  war  in . 

Of  Chesterton  he  has  this  very  quotable  line,  "He 
is  the  plumed  knight  of  literature  with  the  svord 
of  wit  and  burnished  shield  of  Faith."  All  about, 
of  course,  is  the  Kilmerian  humor.  He  asks  his 
wife  to,  "Remember  me  to  your  new  young  infant 
Christopher."  He  says  to  a  friend,  "I'm  sending 
you  some  postcards.  The  person  not  Mike  in  the 
picture  was  Mike's  mother."  And  again: 

Will  you  please  tell  me  at  your  earliest  conveni 
ence  the  name  of  an  asylum  for  blind  orphans,  or 
something  of  the  sort,  which  wants  picture-post 
cards?  I  have  a  truckful  of  them,  and  there's  no 
room  in  the  house  for  them  and  us,  and  yet  I  don't 
want  to  throw  them  away. 

Occasionally  he  speaks  of  Rose,  his  little  daugh 
ter  afflicted  with  infantile  paralysis:  "Rose  is  in 
good  general  health  and  spirits,  thank  God.  She 

[39] 


INTRODUCTION 

can  use  one  fore-arm  a  little.  But  I  cannot  talk 
much  about  her,  except  to  Our  Lady."  Over  and 
over  again,  he  says  (ridiculously  enough),  that  he 
is  much  worried  about  his  work,  he  is  "disgustingly 
lazy."  And  always  he  asked  his  friends  to  pray  for 
him.  He  speaks  of  Father  Corbet: 

He  ran  the  retreat  last  week.  I  got  my  soul 
scraped  pretty  clean,  but  it  soils  easily. 

Remember  me  to  everyone,  and  please  pray  very 
hard  for, 

Your  affectionate  friend. 

IV 

In  the  Memoir  prefixed  to  the  two-volume  set  are 
a  couple  of  errors  of  fact.  As  a  matter  of  rec 
ord  these  should  be  corrected.  The  Memoir  reads : 

Kilmer  was  graduated  from  Rutgers  College  in 
1904,  and  received  his  A.B.  from  Columbia  in 
1906.  ...  As  a  Sophomore  Kilmer  became  en 
gaged  to  Miss  Aline  Murray.  .  .  .  Upon  leaving 
Columbia  he  ...  returned  to  New  Jersey  arid  be 
gan  his  career  as  instructor  of  Latin  at  Morristown 
High  School.  .  .  .  He  married  and  became  a 
householder. 

Kilmer  never  graduated  from  Rutgers  College. 
He  graduated  from  Rutgers  Preparatory  School 
[40] 


INTRODUCTION 

in  1904.  He  went  to  Rutgers  College  for  two 
years,  finishing  his  Sophomore  year.  His  Junior 
and  Senior  years  were  at  Columbia  University. 
He  graduated  from  there  in  1908.  Two  weeks 
after  his  graduation  he  married. 

The  date  of  Kilmer's  death  has  not  been  exactly 
established.  The  Memoir  states,  "Sergeant  Kil 
mer  was  killed  in  action  near  the  Ourcq,  July  30, 
1918."  The  date  popularly  accepted  is  Sunday, 
July  28.  It  was  at  the  dawn  of  this  day  that  the 
165th  made  its  gallant  and  irresistible  drive  into 
the  five  days'  battle  which  followed.  The  Govern 
ment  telegram  to  Joyce's  widow  gave  the  date  of 
his  death  as  August  1,  as  does  also  his  death  cer 
tificate.  His  Citation  for  valor,  however,  names 
the  date  as  July  30. 

At  the  time  the  Memoir  was  written  Joyce  was 
buried  near  where  he  had  fallen,  perhaps  ten  min 
utes'  walk  to  the  south  of  the  village  of  S cringes. 
Later  his  body  was  removed  to  a  cemetery.  This 
cemetery  is  608  at  Scringes  et  Nesles,  in  the  Prov 
ince  of  Aisne.  It  is  within  walking  distance  of  a 
little  village,  Fere  en  Tardenois.  The  cemetery  is 
a  small  one.  It  is  described  as  being  in  a  beauti 
ful  location,  on  a  little  elevation  close  by  the  road. 
The  place  is  about  ninety  miles  from  Paris. 

[41] 


THE  CIRCUS  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 


THE  CIRCUS 

I 

RESTRAINT  is  perhaps  the  most  conspicuous 
literary  virtue  of  the  artists  in  words  who 
have  the  pleasant  task  of  describing  in  programs, 
in  newspaper  advertisements,  and  on  posters  the 
excellences  of  circuses.  The  litterateur  who,  pos 
sessed  of  an  intimate  knowledge  of  the  circus, 
merely  calls  it  "a  new,  stupendous,  dazzling,  mag 
nificent,  spectacular,  educational,  and  awe-inspir 
ing  conglomeration  of  marvels,  mysteries,  mirth, 
and  magic,"  deserves  praise  for  a  verbal  economy 
almost  Greek.  For  he  is  not  verbose  and  extrava 
gant,  he  is  taciturn  and  thrifty;  he  deliberately  uses 
the  mildest  instead  of  the  strongest  of  the  ad 
jectives  at  his  disposal. 

Shyly,  it  seems,  but  in  fact  artfully,  he  uses  mod 
est  terms — "new,"  for  example,  and  "spectacular" 
and  "educational."  These  are  not  necessarily 
words  of  praise.  An  epidemic  may  be  new,  an 
earthquake  may  be  spectacular,  and  even  a  session 
of  school  may  be  educational.  Yet  the  adjectives 

[45] 


THE  CIRCUS  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

proper  to  these  catastrophes  are  actually  applied 
— in  letters  of  gold  and  silver  and  purple — to  the 
circus ! 

The  laureate  of  the  circus,  with  an  aesthetic 
shrewdness  which  places  him  at  once  on  a  level  with 
Walter  Pater  (whose  description  of  the  "Mona 
Lisa,"  by  the  by,  is  an  admirable  example  of  Circus 
press-agent  writing)  considers,  and  rejects  as  too 
bewilderingly  true,  the  mightiest  of  the  adjectives 
that  fit  his  theme.  Discreetly  he  calls  it  "new"  in 
stead  of  "immemorial";  "educational"  instead  of 
"religious."  He  does  not,  as  he  might,  call  the 
circus  poetic,  he  does  not  call  it  aristocratic,  he  does 
not  call  it  democratic.  Yet  all  these  great  words 
are,  as  he  well  knows,  his  to  use.  The  consciousness 
of  his  power  makes  him  gentle. 

His  abnegation  becomes  the  more  startlingly  vir 
tuous  when  it  is  considered  that  he  resists  the  temp 
tation  to  use  that  fascinating  device,  paradox.  For 
the  circus  is  paradox  itself — this  reactionary  and 
futuristic  exhibition,  full  of  Roman  chariots  and 
motor  cycles,  of  high  romance  and  grotesque  real 
ism,  this  demonstration  of  democracy  and  aristoc 
racy,  equality  and  subordination,  worldliness  and 
religion. 

The  press  agent  may,  without  fear  of  logical  con- 
[46] 


THE  CIRCUS 

tradiction,  call  the  circus  religious.  In  the  old  days, 
he  frequently  called  it  a  "moral  exhibition."  This 
was  to  forestall  or  answer  the  attacks  of  the  Puritan 
divines  of  New  England,  who  railed  against  the 
great  canvas  monster  which  invaded  the  sanctity  of 
their  villages. 

"Moral"  was  justly  used.  For  surely  courage, 
patience,  and  industry  are  the  three  qualities  most 
obviously  exhibited  by  the  silk-and-sp angle  clad 
men  and  women  who  dance  on  the  perilous  wire,  fly 
through  space  on  swiftly  swinging  bars,  and  teach 
a  spaniel's  tricks  to  the  man-eating  lion. 

But  the  religious  value,  the  formally  religious 
value,  of  the  circus  is  even  more  obvious  than  its 
moral  value.  For  the  circus,  more  than  any  other 
secular  institution  on  the  face  of  the  earth,  exempli 
fies — it  may  be  said,  flaunts — that  virtue  which  is 
the  very  basis  of  religion,  the  virtue  of  faith. 

Now,  faith  is  the  acceptance  of  truth  without 
proof.  The  man  who  is  told  and  believes  that  some 
thing  contrary  to  his  experience  will  happen  has 
faith.  And  he  who  considers  the  psychology  of  the 
audience  at  a  circus,  he  who  (there  are  scientists 
sufficiently  egotistic)  looks  into  his  own  soul  while 
a  troupe  of  aerial  acrobats  are  before  his  physical 
eyes,  will  see  faith,  strong  and  splendid. 

[47] 


THE  CIRCUS  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

It  is  not  (as  some  pessimists  who  never  went  to 
a  circus  would  have  us  believe)  the  expectation  that 
the  performer  will  fall  and  be  dashed  to  pieces  that 
makes  people  enjoy  a  dangerous  act.  People  are 
like  that  only  in  the  novels  of  D.  H.  Lawrence  and 
the  merry  pastoral  ballads  of  John  Masefield.  The 
circus  audience  gets  its  pleasure  chiefly  from  its 
wholly  illogical  belief  that  the  performer  will  not 
fall  and  be  dashed  to  pieces ;  that  is,  from  the  exer 
cise  of  faith.  The  audience  enjoys  its  irrational 
faith  that  Mme.  Dupin  will  safely  accomplish  the 
irrational  feat  of  hanging  by  her  teeth  from  a  wire 
and  supporting  the  weight  of  all  the  gold  and  pink 
persons  who  theoretically  constitute  her  family. 
They  enjoy  the  exercise  of  this  faith,  and  they  en 
joy  its  justification.  They  really  believe,  just  be 
cause  a  particularly  incredible-looking  poster  tells 
them  so,  that  there  are  in  the  side-show  a  man  with 
three  legs,  a  woman  nine  feet  tall,  and  a  sword 
swallower.  They  give  up  their  money  gladly,  not 
to  find  that  the  poster  was  wrong,  but  because  they 
have  faith  that  it  is  right.  There  are  no  rational 
ists  at  the  circus. 

The  audience  has  faith,  and  the  performers — 
where  would  they  be  without  it? — in  small  frag 
ments,  red  and  white  on  the  tanbark  floor.  "If  the 
[48] 


THE  CIRCUS 

sun  and  moon  should  doubt,"  remarked  William 
Blake,  "they'd  immediately  go  out."  If  the  lady 
who  rides  the  motor  cycle  around  the  interior  of  the 
hollow  brass  ball,  or  the  gentleman  who  balances  a 
pool  table,  two  lighted  lamps  and  a  feather  on  his 
left  ear  should  doubt,  they  would  go  out  just  as 
promptly.  The  Peerless  Equestrienne  believes  that 
she  will  land  on  her  feet  on  the  cantering  white 
horse's  broad  rosined  back  after  that  double  cart 
wheel.  By  faith  the  walls  of  Jericho  fell  down. 
By  faith  the  Eight  Algerian  Aerial  Equilibrists 
stayed  up. 

,You  may,  of  course,  try  this  on  your  son.  As  he 
absorbs  the  strawed  grape  juice  (degenerate  sub 
stitute  for  the  pink  lemonade  of  antiquity!), 
munches  the  sibilant  popcorn  and  the  peanuts  which 
the  elephants  declined,  you  may  pour  into  his  ears 
this  disquisition  on  the  religiosity  of  the  greatest 
show  on  earth.  In  fact,  the  best  time  to  preach  to 
a  child  is  while  he  is  staring,  with  eyes  as  round 
as  the  balloons  he  is  soon  to  acquire,  at  the  splendors 
of  the  three  rings.  For  then  there  is  not  the  slight 
est  chance  of  his  answering  you  back,  or  hearing 
you. 

They  are  modern  enough  for  anyone,  these  wan 
dering  players.  The  gymnasts  are  at  home  on  mo- 

[49] 


THE  CIRCUS  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

tor  cycles,  the  clowns  sport  with  burlesque  aero 
planes.  Yet  they  are  wholesomely  reactionary  in 
other  respects  than  those  of  having  chariot  races 
and  such  unaging  feats  of  skill  and  strength  as  may 
have  cheered  the  hearts  of  Caesar's  legionaries. 
They  are  reactionary  in  that  they  turn  man's  new 
est  triumphs  into  toys.  The  motor  cycle  loses  its 
dignity  and  is  no  longer  an  imposing  proof  of  the 
truth  of  materialistic  philosophy  when  a  girl,  built, 
it  seems,  of  Dresden  china,  rides  it  on  one  wheel 
over  hurdles  and  through  a  hoop  of  flame.  And 
see!  Yorick  himself,  with  his  old  painted  grin  and 
suit  of  motley,  makes  a  Bleriot  the  butt  of  infinite 
jest. 

The  circus  is  vulgar.  Its  enemies  say  so;  its 
friends,  with  grateful  hearts  assent.  It  is  vulgar, 
of  the  crowd.  To  no  play  upon  the  stage  can  this 
lofty  praise  be  given.  For  the  circus  as  it  is  to-day 
would  thrill  and  amuse  and  delight  not  only  the 
crowd  that  to-day  see  it,  but  the  crowd  that  might 
come  from  the  days  before  the  Flood,  or  from  the 
days  of  our  great-grandchildren's  children.  When 
Adam  watched  with  pleased  astonishment  an  agile 
monkey  leap  among  the  branches  of  an  Eden  tree, 
and  laughed  at  the  foolish  face  of  a  giraffe,  he  saw 
a  circus.  Delightedly  now  would  he  sit  upon  a 
[50] 


THE  CIRCUS 

rickety  chair  beneath  a  canvas  roof,  smell  the  ro 
mantic  aroma  of  elephant  and  trampled  grass,  and 
look  at  wonders. 

So  it  is  that  the  vulgarity  of  the  appeal  of  the 
circus — its  democracy,  if  you  prefer — has  no  tem 
poral  or  geographic  limits.  And  the  performers 
themselves  are  a  democracy — the  acrobat  who  som 
ersaults  before  death's  eyes,  the  accomplished  horse 
man,  the  amazing  contortionist,  the  graceful  jug 
gler — all  these  are  made  equal  by  the  ring,  and, 
furthermore,  they  must  compete  for  the  applause 
of  the  throng  with  roller-skating  bears,  trained 
seals,  and  chalk-faced  clowns.  Yet  there  is  aristoc 
racy  of  the  ring,  and  the  subordination  that  Dr. 
Johnson  praised.  For  here  struts  the  ringmaster, 
with  cracking  whip,  imperious  voice,  and  marvelous 
evening  clothes;  the  pageant  with  which  the  great 
show  opened  had  its  crowned  queen;  and  even 
every  troop  of  performing  beasts  has  its  four- 
footed  leader. 

The  stage's  glories  have  been  sung  by  many  a 
poet.  But  the  circus  has  had  no  laureate ;  it  has  had 
to  content  itself  with  the  passionate  prose  of  its 
press  agent.  The  loss  is  poetry's,  not  the  circus's. 
For  the  circus  is  itself  a  poem  and  a  poet — a  poem 
in  that  it  is  a  lovely  and  enduring  expression  of  the 

[51] 


THE  CIRCUS  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

soul  of  man,  his  mirth,  and  his  romance,  and  a  poet 
in  that  it  is  a  maker,  a  creator  of  splendid  fancies 
in  the  minds  of  those  who  see  it. 

And  there  are  poets  in  the  circus.  They  are  not, 
perhaps,  the  men  and  women  who  make  their  liv 
ing  by  their  skill  and  daring,  risking  their  lives  to 
entertain  the  world.  These  are  not  poets ;  they  are 
artists  whose  methods  are  purely  objective.  No, 
the  subjective  artists,  the  poets,  are  to  be  found  in 
the  basement,  if  the  show  is  at  the  Garden,  or,  if 
the  show  be  outside  New  York  they  are  to  be 
found  in  the  little  tents — the  side-shows.  This  is 
not  a  mere  sneer  at  the  craft  of  poetry,  a  mere 
statement  that  poets  are  freaks.  Poets  are  not 
freaks.  But  freaks  are  poets. 

Rossetti  said  it.  "Of  thine  own  tears,"  he  wrote, 
"thy  song  must  tears  beget.  O  singer,  magic  mir 
ror  hast  thou  none,  save  thine  own  manifest  heart." 
Behold,  therefore,  the  man  on  whom  a  crushing  mis 
fortune  has  come.  He  puts  his  grief  into  fair  words, 
and  shows  it  to  the  public.  Thereby  he  gets  money 
and  fame.  Behold,  therefore,  a  man  whom  mis 
fortune  touched  before  his  birth,  and  dwarfed  him, 
made  him  a  ridiculous  image  of  humanity.  He 
shows  his  misfortune  to  the  public  and  gets  money 
and  fame  thereby.  This  man  exhibits  his  lack  of 
[52] 


THE  CIRCUS 

faith  in  a  sonnet-sequence;  that  man  exhibits  his 
lack  of  bones  in  a  tent.  This  poet  shows  a  soul 
scarred  by  the  cruel  whips  of  injustice;  this  man  a 
back  scarred  by  the  tattooer's  needles. 

But  the  freaks  would  not  like  to  change  places 
with  the  poets.  The  freaks  get  large  salaries  (they 
seem  large  to  poets) ,  and  they  are  carefully  tended, 
for  they  are  delicate.  See,  here  is  a  man  who  lives 
although  his  back  is  broken.  There  is  a  crowd 
around  him ;  how  interested  they  are !  Would  they 
be  as  interested  in  a  poet  who  lived  although  his 
heart  was  broken?  Probably  not.  But  then, 
there  are  not  many  freaks. 

II 

When  Tom  Gradgrind  (who  had,  you  re 
member,  robbed  the  Coketown  Bank,  and  been 
saved  from  punishment  by  the  amiable  inter 
vention  of  Sleary's  Circus)  was  living  out  his  exile 
somewhere  in  South  America,  he  often  longed, 
Charles  Dickens  tells  us  in  the  engaging  tale  called 
"Hard  Times,"  to  be  back  in  England  with  his 
sister.  But  what  phase  of  his  dismal  boyhood  and 
wasted  later  years  did  he  see  in  his  homesick 
dreams?  What  episodes  of  his  life  in  England  did 
it  give  him  pleasure  to  relive  in  memory? 

[53] 


THE  CIRCUS  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

Dickens  does  not  tell  us.  But  no  one  who  has 
read  "Hard  Times"  and  seen  a  circus  needs  to  be 
told.  The  repentant  exile,  toiling  under  the  tropic 
sun,  had  no  affectionate  recollections  of  Stone 
Lodge,  his  father's  dreary  mansion  in  Coketown, 
with  its  metallurgical  cabinet,  its  conchological  cab 
inet,  and  its  mineralogical  cabinet.  Nor  was  it  with 
anything  approaching  happiness  that  he  thought  of 
the  Coketown  Bank,  the  scene  of  some  years  of 
dull  labor  and  of  one  moment  of  moral  catastrophe. 

He  remembered,  we  may  be  sure,  two  things. 
He  remembered  appearing,  with  blackened  face,  an 
immense  waistcoat,  knee  breeches,  buckled  shoes, 
and  a  mad  cocked  hat,  as  one  of  the  comic  servants 
of  Jack  the  Giant-Killer  at  a  certain  Grand  Morn 
ing  Performance  of  Sleary's  Circus.  At  the  time 
he  had  been  a  fugitive  from  justice,  but  not  even 
his  fear  and  shame  could  keep  his  heart  from  stir 
ring  as  he  smelled  the  exhilarating  odor  of  tanbark, 
trampled  grass,  and  horses,  heard  the  blare  of  the 
band,  saw  the  glaring  lights  and  the  encircling  tiers 
of  applauding  people,  and  knew  that  he — he,  Tom 
Gradgrind,  the  oppressed,  the  crushed,  the  scien 
tifically  educated — was  really  and  truly  a  circus 
performer! 

And  the  other  recollections,  which,  after  the  lapse 
[54] 


THE  CIRCUS 

of  many  years,  still  made  his  keart  beat  more 
quickly,  had  to  do  with  a  gap  in  the  pavilion  in 
which  Sleary's  Circus  once  held  forth  in  a  suburb 
of  Coketown — a  gap  through  which  young  Tom 
Gradgrind  delightedly  beheld  the  "graceful  eques 
trian  Tyrolean  flower-act"  of  Miss  Josephine 
Sleary,  and  strained  his  astonished  young  eyes  to 
watch  Signore  Jupe  (none  other  than  Sissy's 
father)  "elucidate  the  diverting  accomplishments 
of  his  highly  trained  performing  dog  Merrylegs." 

And  the  reason  why  Sleary's  Circus  played  so 
glorious  a  part  in  the  memory  of  this  broken  exile 
was  that  it  had  brought  into  his  most  prosaic  life 
all  the  poetry  that  he  had  ever  known.  Surrounded 
with  facts,  crammed  with  facts,  educated  and  gov 
erned  according  to  a  mechanical  system  which  was 
an  extraordinary  foreshadowing  of  our  modern  "ef 
ficiency,"  he  was  allowed  two  visits  to  an  enchanted 
realm,  two  draughts  of  the  wine  of  wizardry. 
Twice  in  his  life  he  was  mysteriously  in  communion 
with  poetry. 

There  has  been  much  talk  recently  about  a  re 
nascence  of  poetry,  and  people  have  become  excited 
over  the  fact  that  so  many  thousands  of  copies  of 
Edgar  Lee  Masters'  book  have  been  sold,  and  so 
many  more  thousands  of  copies  of  the  late  Rupert 

[55] 


THE  CIRCUS  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

Brooke's  Collected  Poems.  This  is  all  very  pleas 
ant,  but  it  doesn't  mean  that  there  has  been  a  re 
birth  of  poetry.  Poetry  cannot  be  reborn,  for  po 
etry  has  never  died. 

The  circus  draws  us  by  the  thousands  to  watch 
"desperately  dangerous  displays  of  unrivaled  aeri- 
alism,"  and  "the  acme  of  expert  equitation  and  ac 
robatic  horsemanship"  beneath  the  Diana-guarded 
roof  of  Madison  Square  Garden;  even  so  it  drew 
our  fathers  and  their  fathers  before  them  to  rick 
ety  wooden  benches  propped  against  great  sway 
ing  canvas  walls,  in  the  days  when  Robinson  and 
Lake  displayed  the  wonders  of  the  world  in  glori 
ous  rivalry  with  Hemings,  Cooper  and  Whitby. 
Even  so  will  the  circus  flourish  in  the  days  to  come, 
when  aeroplanes  are  cheaper  than  motor  cars,  and 
the  war  that  began  in  August,  1914,  is  but  a  thing 
of  dates  and  names  in  dusty  textbooks.  For  poetry 
is  immortal.  And  the  circus  is  poetry. 

What  is  the  function  of  poetry?  Is  it  not  to 
blend  the  real  and  the  ideal,  to  touch  the  common 
place  with  lovely  dyes  of  fancy,  to  tell  us  (accord 
ing  to  Edwin  Arlington  Robinson),  through  a 
more  or  less  emotional  reaction,  something  that  can 
not  be  said  ?  And  is  not  this  exactly  what  the  circus 
does?  Most  of  its  charm  is  due  to  the  fact  that  all 
[56] 


THE  CIRCUS 

its  wonders  are  in  some  way  connected  with  our 
ordinary  life.  The  elephant  in  his  enclosure  at  the 
Zoological  Gardens  is  merely  a  marvel;  when  he 
dances  the  tango  or  plays  the  cornet  he  allies  him 
self  with  our  experience,  takes  on  a  whimsical  hu 
manity,  and  thus  becomes  more  marvelous.  The 
elephant  in  the  Zoo  is  an  exhibit ;  the  elephant  tan 
going  in  the  tanbark  ring  is  poetry. 

And  there  is  Zipp,  the  What-is-it?  most  vener 
able  of  freaks,  whose  browless  tufted  head  and 
amazing  figure  have  entertained  his  visitors  since 
Phineas  Taylor  Barnum  engaged  him  to  orna 
ment  his  museum  on  Ann  Street.  For  all  I  know, 
Zipp  is  a  poet — his  smile  is  lyrical,  and  in  his  roving 
eyes  there  is  a  suggestion  of  vers  libre.  But  at  any 
rate,  Zipp  is  a  poem — a  particularly  charming 
poem  when,  in  the  procession  of  freaks  which  opens 
the  performance,  he  gallantly  leads  round  the  arena 
that  fantastically  microcephalous  young  woman 
known  to  fame  as  the  Aztec  Queen.  The  Bearded 
Lady  and  the  Snake  Charmer  and  the  Sword  Swal- 
lower  are  poems — poems  in  the  later  manner  of 
Thomas  Hardy.  And  that  delightfully  diminutive 
chocolate-colored  person  who  rejoices  in  the  name 
of  the  Princess  Wee- Wee — with  her,  in  her  dainty 

[57] 


THE  CIRCUS  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

little  golden-spangled  gown,  what  lyric  of  Walter 
Savage  Landor  can  compare? 

It  is  the  splendor  of  incongruity  that  gives  the 
equestrian  and  aerial  feats  of  the  arena  their  charm, 
that  incongruity  which  is  the  soul  of  romance.  The 
creatures  we  see  are  the  creatures  we  know,  but 
they  have  most  poetically  changed  places.  It  would 
be  the  mere  prose  of  our  daily  life  for  birds  to  fly 
about  close  to  the  tent's  roof,  and  for  men  and 
women  to  ring  bells  and  sit  in  rocking  chairs.  It 
is  the  poetry  of  the  circus  that  men  and  women  fly 
about  close  to  the  tent's  roof,  and  birds  ring  bells 
and  sit  in  rocking  chairs. 

No  one  can  describe  a  circus  in  prose.  The  in 
dustrious  press  agent  of  the  circus  long  ago  gave 
up  the  attempt,  and  resorted  to  impressionistic  free 
verse,  characterized  by  an  ecstasy  of  alliteration. 
No  one  can  adequately  describe  the  involved  contor 
tions,  swings,  and  dashes  of  a  "family"  of  silk-clad 
adventurers  on  the  flying  trapeze.  No  faithful  nar 
rative  of  the  grotesque  buff etings  of  the  chalk-faced 
clowns  is  in  itself  amusing — and  yet  the  antics  of 
these  agile  mimes  have  always  been,  will  always  be, 
irresistibly  mirth-compelling.  The  magic  of  the 
circus  is  compounded  of  so  many  things — move 
ment,  sound,  light,  color,  odor — that  it  can  never 
[58] 


THE  CIRCUS 

be  put  into  words.  It  is  absurd  to  attempt  to  re 
flect  it  in  prose,  and  it  cannot  be  reflected  in  poetry 
because  it  is  itself  poetry;  it  is  the  greatest  poem  in 
the  world. 

And  just  as  Sleary's  Circus  was  the  cup  of  poetry 
which  benevolent  fate  held  twice  to  the  parched  lips 
of  young  Thomas  Gradgrind's  soul,  so  is  the  circus 
of  our  day,  with  its  regiment  of  clowns,  its  roller- 
skating  bears  and  dancing  elephants,  its  radiant 
men  and  women  who  pirouette  on  horseback  and 
dart  above  our  heads  like  swallows,  a  most  whole 
some  and  invigorating  tonic  for  a  weary  and  pro 
saic  generation.  We  who  every  morning  at  the 
breakfast  table  read  of  war  and  desolation  need 
to  cheer  our  hearts  with  the  burlesque  battles  of 
the  clowns ;  we  who  ride  in  the  subway  need  to  exult 
when  the  charioteer,  with  streaming  toga,  guides  his 
six  white  horses  on  their  thunderous  course;  we 
whose  eyes  are  daily  on  our  ledgers  and  sales  rec 
ords  need  to  lift  them,  if  not  to  the  stars,  at  least 
to  the  perilous  wire  on  which  a  graceful  pedestrian 
gayly  flirts  with  death.  We  whose  lives  are  prose 
may  well  be  grateful  for  the  circus,  our  annual 
draught  of  poetry;  for  the  circus,  the  perennial, 
irresistible,  incomparable,  inevitable  Renascence  of 
Wonder. 

[59] 


THE    ABOLITION)   OF   POETS 

EVER  since  certain  vivacious  Frenchmen  put 
on  funny  little  red  nightcaps  and  remarked 
"Qa  ira!"  the  inevitability  of  a  reform  has  been 
the  chief  article  of  its  propaganda.  The  Socialist 
orator  says:  "Socialism  is  coming  upon  us  with 
the  speed  of  the  whirlwind  and  the  sureness  of  the 
dawn."  Therefore  he  mounts  a  soap-box  and  pas 
sionately  urges  six  small  boys,  the  town  drunkard 
and  a  policeman  to  accelerate  the  whirlwind  and 
encourage  the  dawn  in  its  commendable  habit  of 
punctuality.  The  suffragist  tells  us:  "The  Votes 
for  Women  movement,  like  a  mighty  ocean,  will 
break  down  the  barriers  of  prejudice  and  flood  the 
country."  Therefore,  like  a  perverted  Mrs.  Part- 
ington,  she  runs  out  with  her  little  broom  to  help 
the  ocean  along.  And  so,  humbly  following  these 
illustrious  precedents,  I  advocate  the  abolition  of 
poets  because  poets  are  rapidly  abolishing  them 
selves. 

For  one  thing,  they  have  given  up  the  uniform. 
In  the  old  days  it  was  easy  to  recognize  them. 
[60] 


THE  ABOLITION  OF  POETS 

They  wore  velvet  jackets  and  sombreros,  they  let 
their  hair  hang  over  their  shoulders,  they  were  also, 
I  believe,  picturesquely  ragged.  When  you  saw 
M.  Paul  Verlaine  in  his  great  cloak,  drinking  ab 
sinthe  at  a  table  on  the  boulevard,  you  recognized 
him  as  a  poet.  But  when  you  see  Mr.  Clinton  Scol- 
lard  in  his  decorous  cutaway  drinking  a  milk  shake 
in  a  drug  store,  how  are  you  to  guess  his  profession? 

Of  course,  there  are  people  who  look  like  poets. 
When  your  literary  inclined  maiden  aunt  from 
West  Swansey,  New  Hampshire  (by  a  sacred  con 
vention  all  maiden  aunts  are  literarily  inclined), 
visits  New  York,  you  take  her  to  a  restaurant  which 
is  supposed  to  be  bohemian  because  it  is  near  Wash 
ington  Square.  The  macaroni  is  buoyantly  elastic, 
the  lettuce  is  wilted,  the  chicken  tough,  the  wine  a 
blend  of  acetic  acid  and  aniline.  But  your  aunt 
enjoys  it,  and  she  is  vastly  interested  in  the  com 
pany. 

She  hunts  for  poets.  "There!"  she  exclaims. 
"There  is  a  poet!  What  is  his  name?"  And  she 
points  to  a  romantic-looking  youth  with  great  mop 
of  hair,  a  soft-collared  flannel  shirt,  and  a  large 
black  necktie. 

You  answer,  wildly  striving  to  keep  your  reputa 
tion  for  omniscience:  "That?  Why,  that's  Alfred 

[61] 


THE  CIRCUS  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

Noyes."  Or  "That's  James  Whitcomb  Riley." 
Or  "That's  Henry  van  Dyke."  Your  aunt  is  pleas 
antly  thrilled,  and  she  will  entertain  all  West  Swan- 
sey  with  the  tale  of  this  literary  adventure.  And 
you  drown  your  lie  in  a  beaker  of  acid  claret. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  who  is  this  big-necktied, 
long-haired  person?  Perhaps  he  is  a  cabaret  per 
former,  and  will  presently  give  your  aunt  a  novel 
insight  into  the  habits  of  the  literati  by  rising  to 
sing  with  a  lamentable  air  of  gayety,  "Funiculi, 
Funicula."  Perhaps  he  is  one  of  those  earnest 
young  men  who  have  for  their  alma  mater  the  dear 
old  Ferrer  School.  But  in  all  probability  he  is 
merely  an  innocent  bystander  who  endeavors  in 
his  dress  to  commemorate  a  visit  to  East  Aurora. 

The  two  great  steps  in  the  abolition  of  poets  were 
the  shearing  of  Mr.  Richard  Le  Gallienne  and  the 
invention  of  East  Aurora.  When  Mr.  Le  Galli- 
enne's  hair  waved,  a  black  and  curly  banner,  be 
fore  the  literary  legions  of  the  world,  then  poets 
lived  up  to  their  traditional  reputation;  courage 
ously  they  were  picturesque.  But  when  the  fell 
scissors  did  their  brutal  work,  then  poets  donned 
the  garb  of  burgesses. 

And  then  the  more  adventurous  burgesses  began 
to  dress  like  poets.  Mr.  Hubbard  began  the  manu- 
[62] 


THE  ABOLITION  OF  POETS 

facture  of  large  black  neckties,  and  the  Village 
Atheists  all  over  America  put  them  on.  Everyone 
who  had  queer  ideas  about  religion,  economics,  eth 
ics  or  politics  wore  the  necktie  that  had  previously 
confined  only  lyric  throats.  Now  when  you  see  a 
man  wearing  two  yards  of  black  crepe  in  front  of 
his  collar,  do  not  expect  him  to  sing  you  a  madri 
gal.  It  is  probable  that  his  decoration  signifies 
merely  that  he  is  opposed  to  vaccination. 

And  when  the  poets  took  to  wearing  prosaic 
clothes,  they  took  also  to  following  prosaic  occupa 
tions.  Is  there  now  living  a  man  who  does  nothing 
but  write  verse?  I  doubt  that  the  most  thorough 
explorer  of  contemporary  letters  could  discover 
such  an  anachronism.  Poets  still  write  poetry,  but 
the  ancient  art  is  no  longer  their  chief  excuse  for 
existence.  They  come  before  the  public  in  other 
and  more  commonplace  guises. 

Mr.  T.  A.  Daly  was  until  recently  business  man 
ager  of  a  weekly  paper.  Messrs.  Bliss  Carman, 
Richard  Le  Gallienne,  Ford  Madox  Hueff  er,  Nich 
olas  Vachell  Lindsay,  and  eight  thousand  other 
poets  write  literary  criticisms.  Dr.  Henry  van 
Dyke  preaches  and  is  a  diplomat.  Mr.  Rudyard 
Kipling  preaches  and  is  not  a  diplomat.  All  the 
poets  have  regular  jobs.  In  the  good  old  days  it 

[63] 


THE  CIRCUS  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

was  different.  Then  Dr.  Henry  van  Dyke,  Mr. 
Tom  Daly,  and  the  rest  of  them  would  have  done 
nothing  all  day  and  all  night  but  write  poetry  and 
read  it  to  each  other  as  they  sat  and  drank  anisette 
or  some  other  sweet,  sticky  cordial  in  a  club  named 
the  Camembert  Cheese,  or  something  of  the  sort. 
They  would  have  scorned  editing  anything  less 
precious  than  The  Germ  or  The  Yellow  Book. 
And  as  to  writing  book  reviews — as  well  ask  them 
to  get  married  I 

For  a  time  Mr.  Alfred  Noyes  kept  the  spirit  of 
craft-integrity.  He  alone,  among  book  reviewing, 
story  writing,  magazine  editing  versifiers,  was 
solely  a  poet.  But  now  even  he  has  taken  up  a 
side  line.  First  he  delivered  the  Lowell  lectures; 
then  he  became  a  university  professor.  Over  his 
laurel  wreath  he  has  put  a  mortar-board. 

But  the  departure  of  the  poets  from  a  strictly 
professional  attitude  toward  life  is  only  one  side  of 
the  shield.  The  poets  have  become  citizens ;  that  is 
bad  enough.  But  also  the  citizens  have  become 
poets.  They  do  not  call  themselves  poets,  they 
merely  write  verse  as  casually  as  they  write  letters. 

For  one  thing,  the  rhymed  advertisement  is  more 
common  now  than  ever  before.  Formerly,  when 
the  proprietor  or  advertising  manager  of  a  manu- 
[64] 


THE  ABOLITION  OF  POETS 

factory  of  automobiles  or  chewing  gum  or  some 
other  necessity  of  American  life  desired  to  celebrate 
his  wares  in  verse,  he  went  to  some  trouble  and 
expense.  He  called  in  an  impecunious  literary 
man,  that  is,  a  literary  man,  and  with  some  trepida 
tion  made  what  business  men  quaintly  call  a  propo 
sition.  The  poet  considered  the  matter  carefully, 
arranged  the  terms  of  payment,  and  insisted  upon 
the  exclusion  of  his  name  from  the  published  com 
position,  was  supplied  with  material  descriptive  of 
his  subject,  and  departed  to  his  conventional  gar 
ret.  In  the  course  of  time  he  brought  back  the  de 
sired  verses,  was  paid,  and  treated  with  mingled 
curiosity  and  awe  by  the  men  of  affairs  who  had 
made  use  of  his  talents. 

Now  all  is  changed.  The  advertising  managers 
started  scabbing  on  the  unorganized  and  individual 
istic  poets  and  actually  drove  them  off  the  job. 
Now,  when  a  cough  drop  is  to  be  made  the  subject 
of  a  sonnet-sequence  what  happens?  Does  a  reg 
ular  professional  poet  get  a  dollar  a  line  for  the 
work?  He  does  not.  The  advertising  manager 
sends  the  office  boy  out  for  a  rhyming  dictionary 
and  writes  the  verses  himself.  Or  else  he  lets  the 
office  boy  write  them. 

But  this  is  only  one  manifestation  of  this  lament- 

[65] 


THE  CIRCUS  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

able  state  of  affairs.  Another  is  the  fact  that  most 
people  are  the  authors  of  books  of  verse.  People 
do  not  buy  poetry,  they  do  not  read  poetry,  but 
they  write  it  with  amazing  enthusiasm  and  industry. 
There  are  now  at  least  four  prosperous  publishers 
who  do  nothing  but  bring  out  books  at  the  expense 
of  the  authors,  and  their  lists  contain  practically 
nothing  but  volumes  of  verse.  The  country  cler 
gyman,  lawyer,  or  school  teacher  who  has  not  writ 
ten  a  volume  of  verse  and  paid  from  $100  to  $500  to 
have  it  printed  (with  his  portrait  as  frontispiece) 
is  a  rare  bird  indeed.  These  people  never  buy 
books  of  verse,  and,  of  course,  almost  no  copies  of 
their  own  books  are  sold.  But  the  fact  remains  that 
nearly  everybody  who  can  read  and  write  makes 
verse,  carelessly,  casually,  without  effort  or  emo 
tion.  The  shoemaker  who  wishes  to  call  the  atten 
tion  of  the  public  to  his  new  stock  of  canvas  shoes 
with  green  leather  inserts  lisps  in  numbers  and  the 
numbers  come.  And  the  man  who  has  nothing  to 
advertise  but  his  own  personality  seizes  authori 
tatively  upon  the  Muse's  hair  and  pulls  it  until  she 
shrieks  his  praise. 

It  will  be  objected  that  what  these  people  write 
is  merely  verse,  not  poetry;  that  no  one  considers 
them  poets  and  that  they  do  not  claim  the  title. 
[66] 


THE  ABOLITION  OF  POETS 

But  this  is  not  a  valid  objection,  it  is  thoroughly  in 
accordance  with  my  thesis.  They  write  verse,  and 
they  are  not  poets;  therefore  they — all  people,  that 
is — believe  that  one  need  not  be  a  professional  poet 
to  write  verse  any  more  than  one  need  be  a  profes 
sional  dishwasher  to  wash  dishes.  So  poetry,  as  a 
distinct  craft,  utterly  disappears;  it  does  not  even 
continue  as  a  separate  and  special  branch  of  un 
skilled  labor. 

Of  course,  there  still  exist  people  who  take  the 
making  of  verse  somewhat  seriously.  But  the  loud 
est  of  them,  those  who  most  earnestly  insist  upon 
the  importance  of  themselves  and  their  art,  are 
those  ridiculous  young  people  who  call  themselves 
Imagistes  and  Vorticists  and  similar  queer  names. 
And  they  deliberately  take  from  poetry  its  charac 
teristics  of  rhyme  and  rhythm  and  apply  the  name 
poetry  to  little  chunks  of  maudlin  prose.  So  they, 
too,  are  working  for  the  abolition  of  poets  and 
poetry. 

There  is  an  exquisite  Socialist  doctrine  called 
"progressive  poverty''  or  something  of  the  sort,  ac 
cording  to  which  we  are  to  let  conditions  get  worse 
and  worse  so  that  they  may  ultimately  become  un 
bearable.  Then,  it  is  said,  the  cooperative  common 
wealth  will  almost  automatically  come  into  being. 

[67] 


THE  CIRCUS  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

Perhaps  this  suggests  a  solution  for  the  problem 
now  under  consideration.  Let  the  few  remaining 
professional  poets  resolutely  abstain  from  writing 
verse;  let  verse  be  made  only  by  patent  medicine 
manufacturers  and  grocers  and  Imagistes  and,  in 
general,  people  totally  ignorant  of  poetry.  They 
will  produce  it  in  abundance;  they  will  probably 
perfect  some  mechanical  device,  a  poem- jenny, 
perhaps,  which  will  produce  a  standard  poem  in  a 
short  time  and  gradually  do  away  with  the  home- 
manufactured  article. 

In  the  course  of  time  the  patents  on  this  device 
will  be  taken  over  by  the  Standard  Oil  Company, 
and  poems  of  uniform  perfection  will  be  furnished 
at  small  cost  to  every  house  or  apartment.  Then, 
after  some  twenty-five  years,  there  will  come  a  re 
action,  a  sort  of  craftsman,  back-to-nature  move 
ment.  Some  adventurous  person  will  make  up  a 
real  poem  of  his  own,  and  his  friends  will  say, 
"How  quaint!  That  is  the  way  they  did  in  the  old 
days  before  the  poem- jenny  was  invented.  I  rather 
like  this  poem.  It  has  strength,  simplicity,  a  primi 
tive  quality  that  I  cannot  find  in  the  poems  the 
Standard  Oil  Company  sends  up  every  week.  Go 
on,  Rollo,  and  see  if  you  can  make  another  one." 

Thus  encouraged,  Rollo  will  make  another  poem, 
[68] 


THE  ABOLITION  OF  POETS 

and  another,  and  rather  histrionically  will  assume 
the  picturesque  old  title  of  poet.  Other  poets  will 
arise,  and  the  Standard  Oil  Company  will  turn  its 
attention  to  perfecting  devices  for  the  construction 
of  novels.  Poems  made  by  hand  by  specialists  will 
then  be  the  only  articles  of  the  sort  produced.  In 
this  way  only  can  there  ever  be  a  genuine  renascence 
of  the  ancient  and  honorable  craft  of  poetry. 


[69] 


NOON-HOUR  ADVENTURING 

SUN  worship,  according  to  the  latest  religious 
census,  is  no  longer  a  popular  cult.  This  is  a 
pity,  for  it  was  more  respectable  and  more  diverting 
than  most  of  the  forms  of  paganism  that  have  su 
perseded  it. 

But  the  sun  is  a  good-humored  deity;  he  show 
ered  his  gifts  no  more  generously  of  old  on  Teheran, 
whose  walls  were  resonant  with  his  praise,  than 
now  on  faithless  New  York.  Daily  from  his  merid 
ian  he  stretches  forth  his  shining  scimitar  and 
strikes  the  fetters  from  the  feet  of  young  men, 
setting  them  free  to  walk  the  golden  streets  of  an 
enchanted  city. 

The  feet,  I  said,  of  young  men.  For  men  no 
longer  young  the  noon  hour  is  a  time  for  the  com 
fortable  but  unromantic  occupation  of  eating.  The 
man  who  usually  takes  a  car  to  get  from  Thirty- 
third  Street  to  Times  Square,  who  occasionally  lets 
the  barber  rub  tonic  on  the  top  of  his  head,  who 
carries  blocks  and  dolls  home  on  Saturday,  who  is 
morbidly  interested  in  building  loans  and  grass- 
[70] 


NOON-HOUR  ADVENTURING 

seed,  regards  the  noon  hour  as  at  worst  a  time  for 
shopping  and  at  best  a  time  for  eating.  But  to  the 
young  man,  particularly  to  the  young  man  for  the 
first  time  a  wage-earner  in  the  city,  the  noon  hour 
is  a  time  for  splendid  adventuring. 

It  may  be  that  there  are  young  women  for  whom 
the  luncheon  hour  is  a  gay  thread  of  romance  in 
the  dull  fabric  of  the  working  day.  Of  this  I 
cannot  speak  with  certainty;  my  observation  indi 
cates  that  they  regard  it  merely  as  an  opportunity 
to  go,  in  chattering  companies,  to  those  melancholy 
retreats  called  tea  rooms  to  amuse  themselves  with 
gossip  and  extraordinary  ices.  But  the  young  man 
leaves  his  desk  at  the  appointed  hour  as  bravely  as 
ever  pirate  vessel  left  its  wharf,  and  sails  forth  to 
sparkling  and  uncharted  seas. 

Consider,  for  example,  the  case  of  James  Jones. 
James  spent  his  boyhood  in  a  town  less  than  a 
hundred  miles  from  New  York.  Visits  to  the  city 
were  great  events  in  his  young  life.  He  was  taken 
there  to  buy  clothing,  to  go  to  the  theater,  to  visit 
unusually  exciting  relatives  who  lived  in  apartment 
houses,  rode  on  elevators,  and  drew  milk  from 
dumb-waiters.  During  his  collegiate  career  James 
made  occasional  trips  to  New  York,  always  with 
the  theater  and  the  tavern  as  his  objectives.  Tri- 

[71] 


THE  CIRCUS  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

umphantly  now  he  feels  himself  actually  a  New 
Yorker,  a  dweller  in  no  mean  city.  Joyfully,  there 
fore,  he  goes  forth  every  noon  to  explore  the  terri 
tory  of  his  new  possession. 

James  is,  let  it  be  understood,  nearer  20  than  25. 
He  is  beginning  to  regard  his  diploma  with  some 
disrespect,  but  he  still  wears  his  fraternity  pin  on 
an  obscure  corner  of  his  waistcoat.  Every  Satur 
day  morning  he  gets  an  envelope  containing  a  $10 
bill  and  a  $5  bill,  and  he  has  already  formulated  in 
his  mind  an  eloquent  appeal  which  cannot  fail,  he 
believes,  to  increase  that  amount  to  $18.50.  James 
endeavors  to  seem  as  sophisticated  as  the  chauffeur 
of  a  taxicab ;  not  for  worlds  would  he  betray  the  in 
nocent  delight  with  which  he  regards  the  city  of  his 
habitation. 

With  James's  occupation  from  9  in  the  morning 
until  the  luncheon  hour  we  have  no  concern.  Per 
haps  he  sits  on  a  high  stool  and  ciphers  in  a  great 
ledger,  perhaps  he  haltingly  dictates  letters  to  a 
patronizing  stenographer,  perhaps  he  urges  certain 
necessities  or  luxuries  upon  a  suspicious  public. 
The  important  fact  of  his  life — for  us  and,  in  a 
measure,  for  him — is  that  once  every  day  he  an 
swers  the  welcome  summons  of  the  unknown. 

Luncheon  is  a  tiresome  obligation,  quickly  to  be 
[72] 


NOON-HOUR  ADVENTURING 

fulfilled.  His  mother  would  be  vexed  to  see  him 
gulp  his  malted  milk  or  bolt  his  sandwich.  On 
some  occasions,  with  a  pleasant  sense  of  reckless 
ness,  he  enters  a  bar,  and,  with  something  of  a  flour 
ish,  consumes  beer  and  free  lunch.  With  some  dif 
ficulty  he  refrains  from  looking  over  the  swinging 
doors  before  leaving,  as  he  did  in  his  home  town,  to 
make  sure  that  none  of  his  neighbors  are  coming 
down  the  street. 

James  left  his  desk  only  six  minutes  ago  and  his 
luncheon  is  already  over.  There  remain  fifty-four 
precious  minutes.  Behold  him  tasting  rapturously 
of  every  second  of  these  minutes!  Behind  a  cheap 
but  decorative  cigar  he  walks  up,  perhaps,  Fifth 
Avenue,  undeniably  that  excellent  thoroughfare's 
possessor.  For  his  delight  is  Diana  poised  on  her 
tower  of  purple  memories;  the  grass  of  Madison 
Square  is  greener  than  that  of  his  father's  lawn; 
tulips  more  vivid  than  these  never  bloomed  in  the 
rich  gardens  of  Holland. 

He  is  considered  a  sympathetic  person,  but  at 
noon,  I  fear,  his  attitude  is  that  of  a  realist.  For 
he  watches  with  ingenuous  interest  the  antics  of 
that  drunkard  on  a  park  bench,  and  regards  the 
arrival  of  the  patrol  wagon  and  summary  removal 
of  the  culprit  as  a  drama  got  up  solely  for  his  en- 

[73] 


THE  CIRCUS  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

tertainment.     Regrettable  as  it  may  seem,  it  is 
with  heightened  spirits  that  he  continues  his  stroll. 

Now  he  has  reached  a  great  bookshop  which  even 
the  penniless  find  hospitable.  "Some  day,"  says 
James  to  himself,  "two  hundred  copies  of  my  novel 
will  draw  a  crowd  around  this  plate  glass  window." 
Mentally  he  arranges  an  effective  window  display 
and  goes  on  to  feast  his  eyes  on  vellum  and  sha 
green,  on  calf  delicately  tooled  and  parchment  gay 
with  gold  leaf  and  many  colored  inks.  Sometimes 
he  enters  the  shop  (the  clerks  are  indulgent  to 
James  and  his  kind)  and,  over  the  merry  pages  of 
Jug  end  and  La  Vie  Parisienne,  rejoices  that  his 
father  made  him  study  modern  languages  at  college. 

But  literature  must  not  claim  too  much  of  his 
fast-fleeting  hour.  There  are  shops  at  hand  whose 
windows  show  things  stranger  than  books;  chairs 
and  bedsteads  eloquent  of  the  genius  of  Adam  and 
Heppelwhite;  the  massive  silver  platter  on  which 
old  Wardle  carved  a  Christmas  goose  when  Mr. 
Pickwick  was  his  guest;  a  mighty  flagon  that 
brimmed  with  red  wine  for  Pantagruel;  a  carved 
jade  bracelet  from  the  brown  arm  of  the  Princess 
Badoura ;  the  sword  of  Robert  Bruce.  All  lands,  all 
ages  have  sent  their  treasures  to  New  York  this 
noon  for  the  entertainment  of  James  Jones. 
[74] 


NOON-HOUR  ADVENTURING 

It  may  be  that  this  square  of  Japanese  embroid 
ery,  on  which  fantastic  knights  thrust  tremendous 
javelins  at  red  and  green  dragons  under  astonished 
willows,  was  made  in  Paterson,  N.  J.  What  of 
that?  The  colors  are  not  therefore  less  bright. 
James  is  not  a  purchaser,  he  is  merely  a  spectator 
of  the  greatest  raree-show  in  the  world.  It  is  well 
for  him  to  be  deceived  in  the  splendors  displayed 
before  him.  Not  so  many  years  ago  he  would  pre 
fer  a  red  glass  ball  to  the  Kohinoor  and  a  hand  or 
gan  with  a  monkey  to  a  piano  with  Paderewski. 
James  yet  retains  a  receptivity  almost  infantile; 
but  it  would  pain  him  to  be  told  so. 

They  are  not  gregarious,  at  noon,  these  young 
discoverers  of  New  York.  They  are  selfish  in  their 
adventuring,  for  a  vision  shared  is  only  half  a  vision. 
James,  I  know,  is  annoyed  when  he  finds  an  ac 
quaintance  gobbling  a  sandwich  at  his  luncheon 
counter  or  staring  in  a  jeweler's  window  that  he 
has  come  to  regard  as  his  own  private  property. 
On  Sundays  he  is  sociable  enough;  he  is  glad  of  a 
companion  on  his  journeys  across  and  up  and  down 
Manhattan,  among  the  Italians  and  negroes  of  the 
upper  west  side,  through  the  loud  ghetto  and  spe 
ciously  weird  Chinatown,  in  the  deliberate  sylvanity 
of  Central  Park  and  the  Bronx  Gardens.  In  the 

[75] 


THE  CIRCUS  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

evening,  too,  he  is  not  at  all  a  recluse.  But  at  noon 
he  has  no  appetite  for  conversation;  he  would  not 
have  his  attention  taken  from  the  strange  streets 
by  an  accustomed  human  being. 

James  has  never  ridden  on  a  London  bus,  yet  I 
believe  in  the  truth  of  his  unspoken  thought,  that  a 
Fifth  Avenue  bus  is  the  most  excellent  vehicle  in 
the  world.  The  London  bus  depends  for  its  charm 
on  a  number  of  non-essential  qualities;  on  the  hu 
mor  of  its  driver  (are  the  chauffeurs  of  London's 
electric  buses  also  masters  of  epigram?),  on  the 
quaintness  and  antiquity  of  the  thoroughfare,  on 
the  military  efficiency  of  the  traffic  policemen,  on 
the  philmayishness  of  the  passengers.  The  Fifth 
Avenue  bus  has  one  reason  for  existence:  it  shows 
its  passengers  Fifth  Avenue.  No  bus  can  do  more. 

So  one  may  (if  one  is  young  enough  to  be  so 
foolish  and  so  wise)  ride,  like  the  Gaikwar  of  Ba- 
roda  in  his  swaying  howdah,  high  above  the  people 
for  a  golden  hour.  He  may  start  at  uneasy  Wash 
ington  Square,  where  ancient  respectability  wars 
with  young  bohemianism.  Soon  he  looks  down  on 
the  throngs  of  new  Americans  that  tramp  the  once 
proud  pavement.  From  his  high  seat  he  sees  them, 
the  small,  dark  men  and  women  who,  like  him,  are 
for  a  time  released  from  labor.  They  move  slowly 
[76] 


NOON-HOUR  ADVENTURING 

in  great  crowds,  they  eat  frugal  meals,  the  wares 
of  curb-side  peddlers,  they  talk  and  gesture  in 
cessantly.  What  does  James  think  of  them?  I  do 
not  believe  that  his  opinion  is  worth  knowing. 

But  he  enjoys,  I  know,  the  tour  through  the  traf 
fic-filled  intersection  of  Broadway  and  Twenty- 
third  Street,  and  he  is  not  old  enough  to  notice  with 
regret  the  gradual  deterioration  of  the  latter  street. 
Freed  from  the  close  company  of  baser  vehicles, 
how  triumphantly  the  bus  whirrs  up  the  broad 
street  past  the  square,  among  the  splendid  shops 
and  clubs  and  churches — the  true  New  Yorker,  I 
think,  names  them  in  this  order.  But  James  must 
not  give  too  much  attention  to  the  lovely  Gothic 
lines  of  St.  Thomas's,  or  the  lovely  Byzantine 
lines  of  that  pink  chiffon  lady  in  the  landau — the 
luncheon  hour  draws  to  a  close,  and  punctuality,  he 
still  believes,  is  a  business  virtue. 

The  brevity  of  this  recess  is  essential  to  it.  If 
the  time  be  indefinitely  increased,  if  the  young  ad 
venturer  be  allowed  all  the  morning  and  all  the 
afternoon  for  his  wandering,  then  all  the  zest  goes 
out  of  the  adventure.  There  is  that  trusted  vet 
eran  employee  in  the  corner  of  the  office.  He  re 
ceives  fabulous  sums  on  pay  day  and  may  go  out 
to  luncheon  whenever  he  desires,  with  no  time  clerk 

[77] 


THE  CIRCUS  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

to  censor  him.  He  knows  New  York  less  than  does 
James.  But  does  his  curiosity  urge  him  forth  to 
long  adventures?  Over  his  stale  morning's  paper 
in  the  deserted  office,  seated  before  his  familiar 
task,  he  eats  his  sordid  and  wife-made  luncheon! 

But  the  noon  adventurer  is  not  limited  to  Fifth 
Avenue.  The  antique  shops  of  Fourth  Avenue 
charm  him  with  pewter  and  brass,  they  cheer  his 
heart  with  sun  dials  from  English  rose  gardens  and 
crucifixes  from  convents  of  Dante's  land  and  time. 
At  Twenty-third  Street  stalls  he  reads  bits  of  for 
gotten  writings  and  breathes  the  pleasant  scent  of 
worn  calfskin.  Perhaps  on  the  15 -cent  rack  he 
comes  upon  a  prize.  Here  is  a  little  book  of  Eng 
lish  verse  by  a  Japanese  poet.  What  is  this  faded 
inscription?  "To  Mary  McLane  from  Yone  No- 
guchi."  The  adventurer  buys  it,  as  the  late  Mr. 
Morgan  would  buy  a  Nuremburg  Bible,  and  salves 
his  economical  conscience  by  rolling  his  own  cig 
arettes  for  a  while. 

There  are  great  sights  for  him,  now  and  then. 
People  who  seemed,  not  so  long  ago,  as  legendary 
as  Cuchulain  and  Cinderella  appear  to  him  on  these 
noon  expeditions,  most  startlingly  human  and  real. 
He  sees  Mr.  Roosevelt  leave  the  Charities  Build 
ing  to  enter  a  waiting  taxicab.  He  visits  the  boot- 
[78] 


NOON-HOUR  ADVENTURING 

black  and  in  the  chair  next  to  him  sits  Mr.  Bliss 
Carman,  crowned  with  the  huge  black  hat  that  is 
the  livery  of  Vagabondia.  On  Fourteenth  Street  a 
big  black-haired  man  and  a  little  spectacled  woman 
stop  to  laugh  at  the  fortune-telling  paroquets. 
With  a  delicious  thrill  the  adventurer  recognizes 
Mr.  Ben  Reitman  and  Miss  Emma  Goldman. 

Nor  are  his  adventures  confined  to  seeing.  There 
is  plenty  of  action,  sometimes.  Once,  as  he  stared 
into  the  windows  of  an  Oriental  rug  shop,  he  was 
aware  of  a  thin,  hunted-looking  man  who  demanded 
his  attention. 

"I  beg  your  pardon,  Sir,"  said  the  hunted-look 
ing  man,  "but  can  you  tell  me  where  I  can  find  a 
parnbroker?" 

I  do  not  know  why  the  hunted-looking  man  said 
"parnbroker,"  instead  of  "pawnbroker,"  but 
James  always  tells  the  story  this  way. 

"No,"  said  James,  truthfully,  "I  can't." 

"The  reason  I  wanna  know  is,"  said  the  hunted- 
looking  man  very  rapidly,  "I  gotta  very  fine  stone 
here.  I  got  into  a  little  trouble  in  a  hotel  uptown ; 
I  gotta  sell  it  right  away  very  cheap." 

And  from  a  dirty  pasteboard  box  he  drew  what 
seemed  to  be  a  large  diamond  ring. 

Now  was  the  thoroughly  interested  James  aware 

[79] 


THE  CIRCUS  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

of  yet  another  stranger  who  sought  his  attention,  a 
prosperous-looking  man,  who  smoked  a  fat  cigar 
and  flourished  a  silver-headed  stick,  who  seemed 
trying  to  caution  James  against  buying  the  dia 
mond. 

James  had  only  35  cents  in  his  pocket,  and  was 
not  a  buyer,  but  a  spectator  of  jewelry  anyway. 
The  hunted-looking  man  withdrew  slowly.  Then 
said  the  prosperous-looking  man  to  James : 

1  'Excuse  me  for  buttin'  in,  old  man,  but  I  didn't 
want  to  see  you  stung.  Sometimes  these  here  fel 
lers  got  real  stones,  sometimes  they  got  fakes.  Now 
I'm  a  professional  jeweler  and  I  got  my  microscope 
that  I  look  at  diamonds  with  in  my  pocket.  Now, 
you  call  that  guy  back  and  tell  him  I'm  a  friend  of 
yours  and  I'll  examine  that  stone  and  tell  you  if  it's 
any  good." 

The  hunted-looking  man  gave  rather  too  dra 
matic  a  start  of  surprise  when  called  back  by  the 
suspicious  but  curious  James. 

"It's  worth  $500,"  he  said,  "but  I'll  sell  it  for 
$50.  I  got  into  a  little  trouble  at  a  hotel  uptown, 
and  I  gotta  sell  it  cheap." 

Professionally,  elaborately,  impressively,  the 
prosperous-looking  man  screwed  a  glass  into  his 
eye  and  squinted  at  the  stone.  Then,  taking  James 
[80] 


NOON-HOUR  ADVENTURING 

several  yards  away  from  the  hunted-looking  man, 
he  said:  "That's  a  genuine  stone  worth  easy  $500 
if  it's  worth  a  cent.  I  know  a  place  they'll  give  us 
$500  for  it  this  afternoon  on  account  of  me  being  in 
the  trade.  Now,  you  keep  him  here  while  I  go 
round  the  corner  and  get  $25  from  my  bank  and 
then  we'll  buy  that  stone  together  and  make  $225 
apiece  before  two  hours  is  gone.  I'll  be  right  back." 

And  the  prosperous-looking  man  vanished. 

Then — as  might  have  been  expected — the  hunt 
ed-looking  man  offered  James  the  diamond  for 
$25.  "You  can  put  one  over  on  that  big-  guy,"  he 
said.  "Slip  me  $25  and  we  beat  it  before  he  gets 
back.  You  can  clean  up  $450  on  it.  I'm  afraid  of 
that  big  guy;  I  think  he's  gone  after  a  cop." 

Now,  these  two  confidence  men  had  worked  hard 
with  James.  He  should  not  have  taken  such  de 
light  in  their  discomfiture  as  he  climbed  the  steps 
of  a  bus  and  bade  them  farewell. 

When  he  met  the  hunted-looking  man  and  the 
prosperous-looking  man  together  on  Broadway  a 
few  days  later  they  cut  him,  and  I  do  not  blame 
them.  But  they  gave  him  a  real  adventure,  at 
any  rate,  an  adventure  not  to  be  met  by  those  who 
squander  their  noon  hour  sitting  dully  in  sedate 
restaurants. 

[81] 


THE  CIRCUS  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

Then  there  was  the  adventure  of  the  picture  gal 
lery.  James  went  on  one  occasion  to  a  futurist  ex 
hibition  in  a  tiny  room  not  far  from  Madison 
Square.  Galleries  are  not  crowded  at  noon,  but 
from  the  room  that  James  approached  came  sounds 
not  to  be  accounted  for  even  by  the  crazy  canvases 
on  its  walls.  Of  course  James  went  in,  and  found 
a  futurist  painter  wrestling  with  the  agent  of  a 
collection  agency.  The  combatants  rose,  and  de 
manded  James's  name  and  address,  that  he  might, 
be  summoned  to  court  as  a  witness  to  assault  and 
battery.  But  he  never  received  either  summons. 
Perhaps  it  wras  because  he»gave  his  name  as  Henry 
Smith  of  Yonkers. 

Episodes  like  these  have  little  charm  for  the  mid 
dle-aged  or  for  young  men  prematurely  aged  by 
spending  their  childhood  in  New  York.  These  have 
their  compensations,  no  doubt;  their  lives  are  not 
utterly  bleak.  But  not  for  them  is  the  daily  ro 
mance  of  the  young  man  who  has  just  come  to  the 
city,  who  enjoys  the  proud  novelty  of  working  for 
wage,  to  whom  every  noon  come  sweet  and  strange 
the  streets'  compelling  voices. 


[82] 


SIGNS  AND  SYMBOLS 

THOSE  people  whom  an  hostile  fate  has  made 
both  athletes  and  reformers  have  among  their 
aversions  one  which  they  proclaim  with  an  enthusi 
asm  so  intense  as  to  be  almost  infectious.  They 
dislike  passionately  the  harmless,  unnecessary  sign 
board  when  it  has  been  so  placed  as  to  become  a 
feature  of  the  rural  landscape.  Wooden  cows  sil 
houetted  against  the  sunset  only  irritate  them  by 
their  gentle  celebrations  of  malted  milk ;  the  friend 
liest  invitation  to  enjoy  a  cigarette,  a  corset  or  a 
digestive  tablet  fills  them  with  anger  if  it  comes 
from  the  face  of  a  sea-shadowing  cliff  or  from 
among  the  ancient  hemlocks  of  a  lofty  mountain.- 
There  is,  of  course,  a  modicum  of  reason  in  their 
attitude.  It  is  wrong  to  paint  the  lily  at  all;  it  is 
doubly  wrong  to  paint  "Wear  Rainproof  Socks" 
across  its  virgin  petals.  It  is  wrong  to  mar  beauty ; 
that  is  an  axiom  of  all  aesthetics  and  of  all  ethics. 
It  would  be  wrong,  for  example  (although  it  would 
be  highly  amusing),  to  throw  by  means  of  a  magic 
lantern  great  colored  phrases  against  Niagara's 

[83] 


THE  CIRCUS  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

sheet  of  foam ;  it  would  be  wrong  to  carve  ( as  many 
earnest  readers  of  our  magazines  believe  has  been 
done)  an  insurance  company's  advertisement  on 
the  Rock  of  Gibraltar. 

But  the  aesthete-reformer,  in  condemning  such 
monstrosities  as  these,  condemns  merely  an  hy 
pothesis.  And  since  the  hypothesis  obviously  is 
condemnable,  he  starts  a  crusade  against  the  inno 
cent  facts  upon  which  the  purely  hypothetical  evil 
is  based.  It  is  wrong  to  mar  the  snowy  splendor 
of  the  Alps ;  therefore,  he  says,  the  Jersey  meadows 
must  not  bear  upon  their  damp  bosom  the  jubilant 
banner  of  an  effective  safety-razor.  The  sylvan 
fastness  of  our  continent  must  be  saved  from  the 
vandal;  therefore,  he  says,  you  may  not  advertise 
breakfast  food  on  a  hoarding  in  the  suburbs  of 
Paterson. 

If  the  aesthete-reformers  in  question  would  ex 
amine  the  subject  dispassionately  they  would  see 
that  there  is  really  nothing  in  the  sign  board  as  it 
stands  to-day  about  which  they  may  justly  com 
plain.  Advertisers  do  not  deliberately  annoy  the 
public;  they  would  not  be  so  foolish  as  to  seek  to 
attract  people  by  spoiling  what  was  beautiful.  It 
must  be  remembered  that  a  landscape  may  be  rustic 
and  yet  not  beautiful. 
[84] 


SIGNS  AND  SYMBOLS 

The  aesthete  does  not  dislike,  instead  he  hails 
with  enthusiasm,  a  worn  stone  bearing  the  dim  in 
scription  "18  Mil.  To  Ye  Cittye  of  London." 
Why  then  should  he  shudder  when  he  sees  a  bright 
placard  which  shouts  "18  Miles  to  the  White  Way 
Shoe  Bazaar,  Paterson's  Pride"?  To  my  mind 
there  is  a  vivacity  and  a  humanness  about  the  sec 
ond  announcement  utterly  lacking  in  the  first.  The 
aesthete  dotes  upon  the  swinging  boards  which  with 
crude  paintings  announce  the  presence  of  British 
inns.  If  "The  Purple  Cow,  by  Geoffrey  Pump. 
Entertainment  for  Man  and  Beast"  delights  his 
soul,  why  does  he  turn  in  angry  sorrow  from  "Stop 
at  the  New  Mammoth  Hotel  when  you  are  in 
Omaha — 500  Rooms  and  Baths — $1.50  up — All 
Fireproof"?  It  is  a  cheerful  invitation,  and  it 
should  bring  to  jaded  travelers  through  the  track- 
pierced  wastes  a  comfortable  sense  of  approaching 
welcome  and  companionship. 

There  are  many  things  which  might  be  said  in 
favor  of  urban  sign  boards,  especially  in  favor  of 
those  elaborate  arrangements  in  colored  lights 
which  make  advertisements  of  table  waters  and 
dress  fabrics  as  alluringly  lovely  as  the  electrical 
splendor  of  the  first  act  of  Dukas'  "Ariane  et  Barbe 
Bleu."  But  in  the  city  the  sign  board  is  always 

[85] 


THE  CIRCUS  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

something  supererogatory;  it  may  be  decorative, 
but  it  is  not  necessary.  One  does  not  need  a  six- 
yard  announcement  of  a  beer's  merit  when  there  are 
three  saloons  across  the  street ;  even  the  placards  of 
plays  line  almost  uselessly  the  thoroughfares  of  a 
district  in  which  the  theaters  are  conspicuous. 

But  in  the  country  the  sign  boards  are  no  lux 
uries  but  stern  necessities.  This  the  aesthete- 
reformers  fail  to  see  because  they  lack  a  sense  of  the 
unfitness  of  things.  It  is  their  incongruity  which 
gives  to  rustic  sign  boards  the  magic  of  romance. 
The  deliberately  commercial  announcement,  firmly 
set  in  an  innocent  meadow  or  among  the  eternal 
hills,  has  exactly  the  same  charm  as  a  buttercup  in  a 
city  street  or  a  gray  wood-dove  fluttering  among 
the  stern  eaves  of  an  apartment  house. 

What  a  benefaction  to  humanity  these  rural  sign 
boards  are!  To  the  farmer  they  are  (in  addition  to 
being  a  source  of  revenue)  a  piquant  suggestion  of 
the  wise  and  wealthy  city.  He  loves  and  fears  the 
city,  as  mankind  always  loves  and  fears  the  un 
known.  Once  he  thought  that  it  was  paved  with 
gold.  He  must  have  thought  so,  otherwise  how 
could  he  have  accounted  for  the  existence  of  gold 
bricks?  He  is  less  credulous  now,  but  still  the  big 
[86] 


SIGNS  AND  SYMBOLS 

signs  down  where  the  track  cuts  across  the  old 
pasture  pleasantly  thrill  his  fancy. 

And  what  would  a  railway  journey  be  without 
these  gay  and  civilizing  reminders?  They  hide  the 
shame  of  black  and  suicidal  bogs  with  cheery  hints 
of  vaudeville  beyond,  they  throw  before  the  privacy 
of  farmhouses  a  decent  veil  of  cigarette  advertise 
ments.  He  who  speeds  vacation-ward  from  the  city 
is  glad  of  them,  for  they  remind  him  that  he  is 
where  factories  and  huge  shops  may  come  only  in 
this  pictured  guise,  thin  painted  ghosts  of  their 
noisy  selves.  He  who  gladly  speeds  back  to  do 
mesticity  and  the  ordered  comforts  of  metropolitan 
life  sees  them  as  welcoming  seneschals,  glorious  ad 
vance-posts  of  civilization.  They  are  the  least  com 
mercial  of  all  commercial  things,  they  are  as  human 
and  as  delightful  as  explorers  or  valentines. 


[87] 


THE  GREAT  NICKEL  ADVENTURE 

WHENEVER  I  read  Mr.  Chester  Firkins' 
excellent  poem  "On  a  Subway  Express"  I 
am  filled  with  amazement.  It  is  not  strange  that 
Mr.  Firkins  turned  the  subway  into  poetry,  it  is 
strange  that  the  subway  does  not  turn  every  one  of 
its  passengers  into  a  poet. 

There  are,  it  is  true,  more  comfortable  means 
of  locomotion  than  the  subway;  there  are  convey 
ances  less  crowded,  better  ventilated,  cooler  in 
Summer,  warmer  in  Winter.  A  little  discomfort, 
however,  is  an  appropriate  accompaniment  of  ad 
venture.  And  subway-riding  is  a  splendid  adven 
ture,  a  radiant  bit  of  romance  set  in  the  gray  fabric 
of  the  work-a-day  world. 

The  aeroplane  has  been  celebrated  so  enthusias 
tically  in  the  course  of  its  brief  life  that  it  must 
by  now  be  a  most  offensively  conceited  machine. 
Yet  an  aeroplane  ride,  however  picturesque  and 
dangerous,  has  about  it  far  less  of  essential  ro 
mance  than  a  ride  in  the  subway.  He  who  sails 
through  the  sky  directs,  so  nearly  as  is  possible,  his 
[88] 


THE  GREAT  NICKEL  ADVENTURE 

course;  he  handles  levers,  steers,  goes  up  or  down, 
to  the  left  or  the  right.  Or  if  he  is  a  passenger,  he 
has,  at  any  rate,  full  knowledge  of  what  is  going  on 
around  him,  he  sees  his  course  before  him,  he  can 
call  out  to  the  man  at  the  helm :  "Look  out  for  that 
comet's  hair !  Turn  to  the  left  or  the  point  of  that 
star  will  puncture  our  sail!" 

Now,  unseen  dangers  are  more  thrilling  than 
those  seen;  the  aeroplane  journey  has  about  it  in 
evitably  something  prosaic.  This  is  the  great 
charm  of  the  subway,  that  the  passengers,  the 
guards,  too,  for  that  matter,  give  themselves  up 
to  adventure  with  a  blind  and  beautiful  reckless 
ness.  They  leave  the  accustomed  sunlight  and 
plunge  into  subterranean  caverns,  into  a  region  far 
more  mysterious  than  the  candid  air,  into  a  region 
which  since  mankind  was  young  has  been  associated 
with  death.  Before  an  awed  and  admiring  crowd, 
the  circus  acrobat  is  shut  into  a  hollow  ball  and 
catapulted  across  the  rings;  with  not  even  a  sense 
of  his  own  bravado,  the  subway  passenger  is  shut 
into  a  box  and  shot  twenty  miles  through  the  earth. 

Once  there  lived  on  West  One  Hundred  and 
Eighty-second  Street  a  man  of  uncompromising 
practicality,  a  stern  rationalist.  He  was  as  ad 
vanced  as  anything!  He  believed  in  the  material- 

[89] 


THE  CIRCUS  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

istic  interpretation  of  history,  economic  determin 
ism,  and  radium ;  this,  he  said,  with  some  pride,  was 
his  Creed.  Often  he  expressed  his  loathing  for 
"flesh-food,"  more  frequently  for  "Middle  Class 
morality,"  most  frequently  for  faith.  "Faith  is 
stupidity,"  he  would  say.  "Look  before  you  leap ! 
It  makes  me  sick  to  see  the  way  people  have  been 
humbugged  in  all  ages.  The  capitalist  class  has 
told  them  something  was  true,  something  nobody 
could  understand,  and  they've 'blindly  accepted  it, 
the  idiots!  I  believe  in  what  I  see — I  don't  take 
chances.  I  don't  trust  anybody  but  myself." 

Yet  every  day  this  man  would  give  himself  up 
to  the  subway  with  a  sweet  and  child-like  faith.  As 
he  sat  in  the  speeding  car,  he  could  not  see  his 
way,  he  had  no  chance  of  directing  it.  He  trusted 
that  the  train  would  keep  to  its  route,  that  it  would 
stop  at  Fourteenth  Street  and  let  him  off.  He 
could  not  keep  it  from  taking  him  under  the  river 
.and  hurling  him  out  into  some  strange  Brooklyn 
desert.  When  he  started  for  home  in  the  evening, 
he  read  the  words  "Dyckman  Street"  on  the  car 
window  with  a  medieval  simplicity,  and  on  the  guar 
antee  of  these  printed  words,  placed  there  by 
minions  of  the  capitalist  class,  he  gave  up  the  privi 
lege  of  directing  his  course.  The  train,  he  believed, 
[90] 


THE  GREAT  NICKEL  ADVENTURE 

would  not  at  Ninety-sixth  Street  be  switched  off  to 
a  Bronx  track;  the  sign  told  him  that  he  was  safe, 
and  he  believed  it. 

So  the  subway  caused  him  to  exercise  the  virtue 
of  faith,  made  him,  for  a  time,  really  a  human 
being.  Perhaps  it  is  the  sharing  of  this  faith  that 
makes  a  subway  crowd  so  democratic.  Surely  there 
is  some  subtly  powerful  influence  at  work,  chang 
ing  men  and  women  as  soon  as  they  take  their  seats, 
or  straps. 

For  one  thing,  they  become  alike  in  appearance. 
The  glare  of  the  electric  light  unifies  them,  modify 
ing  swarthy  faces  and  faces  delicately  rouged  until 
they  are  nearly  of  one  hue.  Then,  the  differences 
of  attitude  are  lost,  and  attitudes  are  great  instru 
ments  of  subordination.  The  ragged  bootblack 
does  not  kneel  at  the  broker's  feet;  he  sits  close  be 
side  him,  or  perhaps,  comfortably  at  rest,  watches 
the  broker  clutch  a  strap  and  struggle  to  keep  his 
footing. 

"Tired  clerks,  pale  girls,  street-cleaners,  business 
men,  boys,  priests  and  sailors,  drunkards,  students, 
thieves" — all  gain  a  new  sincerity.  Neither  [the 
millionaire's  imperiousness  nor  the  beggar's  pro 
fessional  humility  can  make  the  train  go  faster,  so 
both  are  laid  aside.  Distinctions  of  race  and  caste 

[91] 


THE  CIRCUS  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

grow  insignificant,  as  in  a  company  confronting  one 
peril  or  one  God.  This  is  not  theory,  it  is  fact. 
The  subway  passenger  purchases  a  nickel's  worth 
of  speed  and  he  must  take  with  it  a  nickel's  worth 
of  democracy. 

Perhaps  it  is  the  youthful  romanticism  of  Amer 
ica  which  makes  our  subways  so  much  more  exciting 
than  those  of  Europe.  The  Englishman  is  too 
cautious  and  too  conservative  to  trust  himself  away 
from  the  earth's  surface  more  than  two  minutes  at 
a  time.  So  the  trains  that  run  through  the  London 
tube  are  tame,  cowardly  things.  They  timidly  run 
underground  for  half  a  mile  or  so  and  pop  their 
heads  out  into  the  air  and  sunlight  or  fog  at  every 
station. 

But  the  New  York  subway  train  is  ready  to  take 
a  chance.  It  dives  into  the  earth  and  "stays  under," 
like  a  brave  diver,  for  an  hour  at  a  time.  And 
when  it  does  emerge,  what  splendor  attends  its 
coming!  There  is  a  glimmer  of  sunshine  at  the  One 
Hundred  and  Sixteenth  Street  Station;  the  blue 
and  white  of  the  walls  and  pillars  reflect  a  light  not 
wholly  artificial.  Then  there  is  a  brief  stretch  of 
fantastically  broken  darkness.  Passengers  in  the 
first  car  can  see  ahead  of  them,  at  Manhattan 
Street,  a  great  .door  of  sunshine.  At  last  there  is 
[92] 


THE  GREAT  NICKEL  ADVENTURE 

a  strange  change  in  the  rumble  of  the  wheels,  for 
the  echoing  roof  and  walls  are  gone,  and  the  train 
leaves  its  tunnel  not  to  run  humbly  over  the  ground, 
but  to  rise  higher  and  higher  until  it  comes  to  a 
sudden  halt  above  the  chimneys  and  tree  tops.  To 
say  that  the  grub  becomes  a  butterfly  does  not  fit 
the  case,  for  the  grub  is  a  slow-moving  beast  and 
a  butterfly's  course  is  capricious.  Rather,  it  is  as 
if,  by  some  tremendous  magic,  a  great  snake  be 
came  a  soaring  eagle. 

And  how  keenly  all  the  passengers  enjoy  their 
few  seconds  in  the  open  air!  When  they  hurried 
down  the  steps  to  the  train,  they  were  scornful  of 
the  atmosphere  they  were  leaving,  they  had  no 
thought  of  tasting  wind  and  watching  sunlight. 
Now  they  are  become,  for  the  moment,  connoisseurs 
of  these  delectable  things ;  they  wish  the  train  would 
linger  at  Manhattan  Street,  not  inevitably  plunge 
at  once  into  its  roaring  cavern.  But  the  train  is 
wise,  it  knows  brevity  is  essential  to  all  exquisite 
things,  so  it  gives  its  passengers  only  an  evanescent 
glimpse  of  the  glories  they  have  just  now  learned 
to  appreciate. 

This  is  a  part  of  the  great  conspiracy  of  the  sub 
way.  It  is  regarded  only  as  a  swift  and  convenient 
and  uncomfortable  carrier,  and  it  has  no  wish  to  be 

[28] 


THE  CIRCUS  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

otherwise  interpreted.  But  those  who  have  studied 
it  know  the  hidden  purposes  it  constantly  and  ef 
fectively  serves.  It  is  showing  our  generation  the 
value  of  mankind's  commonest  and  most  precious 
gifts,  by  taking  them  away. 

Now,  it  is  good  for  man  or  beast  to  stand  on  solid 
ground  in  the  sunlight,  breathing  clean  air.  Also 
fellowship  is  good,  and  the  talk  of  friends.  We  for 
got  the  value  of  these,  we  shut  ourselves  up  in  dark 
rooms  and  we  spared  no  time  to  social  exercise. 
Then — to  punish  and  cure  our  folly — came  the  sub 
way,  making  our  journeys  things  close  and  dark  in 
which  conversation  is  a  matter  of  desperate  effort. 
And  now  how  kind  and  talkative  are  people  who 
go  home  together  from  the  subway  station  after 
their  daily  disciplinary  ride!  They  are  grateful, 
too — although  it  may  be  subconsciously — for  the 
familiar  sights  and  sounds  of  the  earth,  for  houses 
and  streets  and  light  that  does  not  come  from  a 
wire  in  a  bottle.  They  take  gladly  the  great  com 
mon  things ;  they  are  simple,  natural,  democratic. 

So  they  spend  much  of  their  leisure  out  of  doors, 
these  men  and  women  who  are  underground  two 
hours  every  weekday.  In  the  evenings  and  on  Sun 
day  afternoons,  they  walk  the  pleasant  streets  with 
eager  delight.  They  are  curious  about  the  loveli- 
[94] 


THE  ,GREAT  NICKEL  ADVENTURE 

ness  far  beneath  which  they  daily  speed.     They 
have  learned  something  of  the  art  of  life. 

Of  course,  the  subway  has  its  incidental  charms 
— its  gay  fresco  of  advertisements,  for  instance, 
and  its  faint  mysterious  thunder  when  it  runs  near 
the  surface  of  the  street  on  which  we  stand.  But 
its  chief  service  to  man — perhaps  its  reason  for 
existence — is  that  it  gives  him  adventure.  In  this 
adventure  he  meets  the  spirit  of  faith  and  the  spirit 
of  democracy,  which  is  an  aspect  of  charity.  And 
by  their  influence  he  becomes,  surely  though  but 
for  a  time,  as  a  little  child. 


[95} 


THE  URBAN  CHANTICLEER 

IF  the  rooster  selected  tree-tops  for  his  roost 
ing,  crowed  mournfully  at  the  moon,  and  were 
a  wild,  iinfr.'.'p-'iy  bird,  every  man's  hand  would  be 
against  him.  But  we  forgive  him  his  ugliness  and 
conceit,,  not  only  because  he  is  a  dutiful  citizen  of 
the  barnyard,  but  also  because  now,  as  in  the  days 
of  the  noble  I  loratio,  he  obligingly  acts  as  "trumpet 
to  the  morn."  On  account  of  this  romantic  and 
sometimes  useful  custom,  he  wears  a  sentimental 
halo.  M.  Rostand  has  made  him  the  hero  of  a 
drama.  When  will  some  wise  playwright  celebrate 
his  urban  prototype,  the  alarm  clock? 

The  spirit  in  which  this  question  is  asked  is  not 
wholly  one  of  mockery.  For  the  alarm  clock  is 
close  to  humanity;  in  the  city  household,  few  bits 
of  furniture  a. re  more  personal  and  necessary.  It 
is  a  faithful  servant,  this  loud-voiced  creature  of 
steel  and  glass,  obedient,  punctual,  patient.  And 
its  association  with  its  owner,  J  had  almost  written 
its  master,  is  so  peculiarly  intimate  as  to  give  it  a 
personality  and  an  attitude  toward  life. 
[0«J 


THE  URBAN  CHANTICLEER 

In  the  first  place,  it  is  irresistibly  egotistic. 
There  are  some  usual  p  which  become 

subconscious  things,  their  identities  merging  with 
the  shadows  of  the  vague  land  of  habit.  One  may, 
for  instance,  possess  a  watch  and  yet  not  be  aware 
of  the  watch  as  he  re  of  his  alarm  clock.  He 

lifts  it  from  and  returns  it  to  his  pocket;  he  winds 
it.  with  a  gesture  almost  involuntary;  he  takes  his 
information  from  his  dial  as  thoughtlessly  as  he 
takes  his  breath  from  the  atmosphere.  Though  it 
be  made  of  tine  gold,  cunningly  chased  and 
bla/.oned  with  precious  stones,  it  is  to  him.  after 
the  first  delight  of  its  acquisition,  the  unregarded 
means  to  an  important  end.  So  long  as  it  serves 
him  unprotestingly,  he  thinks  of  it  no  more  than 
of  his  soul.  People  do  not  specifically  ask  him  to 
consult  his  watch,  they  ask.  "What  time  is  it  r"  and 
even  Have  you  the  time?" 

Not  thus  does  an  alarm  clock  sink  into  oblivion. 
At  least  twice  in  twenty-four  hours  its  owner  must 
be  vividly  aware  of  its  existence.  It  imperiously 
r.nds  of  him  conscious  action.  In  the  morning 
dangerously,  at  night  dumbly,  it  insists  on  atten 
tion.  He  must  with  thought  adjust  its  mechan 
ism,  he  must  give  it  intelligent  orders.  And 
whether  he  rises  at  its  summons  or  instead  shuts 

[97] 


THE  CIRCUS  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

out  with  a  pillow  its  voice  and  that  of  conscience, 
he  cannot  ignore  it.  By  no  effort  of  will  could 
Frankenstein  forget  his  monster. 

Not  that  the  alarm  clock  is  always  a  thing  mon 
strous  and  threatening.  It  obeys  orders  with  sol 
dierly  exactness  but  its  sympathy  is  most  unmartial. 
Routine  cannot  deaden  its  sensitivity.  True,  its  or 
dinary  note  is  something  dry  and  monotonous. 
This  comes  from  its  perfect  sense  of  the  fitness  of 
things;  the  call  to  business  should  be  business-like. 
But  what  triumphant  peals  burst  from  its  tiny  bel 
fry  when  it  bids  you  rise  and  put  on  robes  of  honor ! 
It  can  mimic  the  proud  mirth  of  wedding  bells ;  it 
knows  the  mighty  song  that  rang  from  all  the  tow 
ers  of  London  to  cheer  Dick  Whittington.  And 
that  it  can  utter  harsh  and  strident  grief,  those 
know  who  lie  down  with  Sorrow  and  must  awaken 
with  her. 

Even  the  most  materialistic  man  has  for  his  alarm 
clock  a  shame-faced  personal  regard.  He  speaks 
of  it  deprecatingly,  with  a  humorous  show  of  in 
dignation.  He  tells  how  he  maltreated  it,  knocked 
it  from  the  mantel,  smothered  it  with  blankets,  and 
there  is  a  note  of  almost  paternal  exultation  in  his 
voice  when  he  describes  its  persistence  in  ringing. 

Franker  souls  actually  parade  what  may  be 
[98] 


THE  URBAN  CHANTICLEER 

termed  their  alarm-clockophilia.  A  friend  of  mine, 
one  Carolus  Dillingham,  talks  by  the  hour  of  his 
Nellie.  Nellie  is  not,  to  the  casual  observer,  an 
alarm  clock  of  extraordinary  merit.  She  was  con 
structed  many  years  ago  and  her  nickel-plating  is 
nearly  gone.  She  is  a  small,  weak-looking  thing, 
with  a  great  dome  absolutely  out  of  proportion  to 
her  rickety  body.  A  result  of  her  ridiculous  con 
struction  is  that  when  the  alarm  rings,  she  becomes 
slightly  overbalanced,  trembles,  and  moves  a  frac 
tion  of  an  inch  forward  on  her  feeble  legs. 

This,  according  to  Carolus,  is  her  chief  charm. 
"I  put  Nellie,"  he  says,  "on  the  very  edge  of  the 
shelf  by  the  foot  of  my  bed.  When  she  rings  in 
the  morning  she  topples  off  and  lands  on  the 
blankets.  So  I  don't  need  to  get  up  and  walk 
across  the  cold  floor.  I  can  just  reach  out  and 
choke  her.  I  think  she  is  the  most  faithful  alarm 
clock  in  the  world." 

One  little  regarded  virtue  of  the  alarm  clock  is  its 
sturdy  democracy.  It  belongs  irrevocably  to  the 
people,  nothing  can  make  it  a  snob.  There  is  a 
watch  for  every  rank;  there  are  coarse  peasant 
watches,  fat  bourgeois  watches,  and  watches  deli 
cately  aristocratic.  But  the  alarm  clock  in  the  tene 
ment  of  the  laborer  is  the  exact  duplicate  of  that 

[99] 


THE  CIRCUS  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

which  wakens  his  employer;  an  alarm  clock's  an 
alarm  clock  for  a'  that.  America  will  never  really 
be  a  decadent  nation  until  its  alarm  clocks  are 
jeweled  and  soft-voiced. 

The  captious  critic  may  object  that  the  reason 
for  the  plainness  of  alarm  clocks  is  that  their  use 
is  restricted  to  what  is  loosely  called  "the  work 
ing  class."  There  is  some  truth  in  this. 

Up  to  the  present  I  have  never  witnessed  the 
awaking  of  an  aristocrat,  or  even  of  a  captain  of 
industry,  but  I  suppose  that  they  are  hailed  in  soft 
tones  by  liveried  menials,  who  bring  them  golden 
trays  absolutely  overflowing  with  breakfast  food 
and  remarkably  thick  cream.  But  aristocrats  and 
captains  of  industry  are  rare  birds,  and  all  other 
people  must  have  alarm  clocks. 

All  other  people,  that  is,  who  live  in  cities.  For 
the  alarm  clock,  in  spite  of  its  numerous  excel 
lences,  is  as  inappropriate  in  the  country  as  rouge 
on  a  milkmaid.  The  farmer  must  try  to  live  up  to 
his  craft,  and  one  of  the  aesthetic  duties  is  to  depend 
on  mechanism  as  little  as  possible.  His  wife  should 
rise  when  she  hears  the  poultry  saluting  the  dawn. 
Then,  so  nearly  as  I  remember  her  obligations, 
she  should  go  out  on  the  front  porch  and  blow  a 
conchshell  until  her  husband  wakes  up. 
[100] 


THE  URBAN 

The  dweller  in  the  suburbs  is  a. c^atu re ( of  coin- 
promise.  He  grows  vegetables  and  keeps  chickens, 
perhaps  he  grows  vegetables  for  the  use  of  the 
chickens,  and  he  cultivates  a  rural  manner  of 
speech.  But  he  spends  most  of  his  waking  hours 
in  the  city  and  every  night  he  brings  out  with  him 
on  the  five-twenty-seven  some  device  to  alter  the 
simplicity  of  the  country.  He  is  an  ambiguous 
creature,  analogous  to  the  merman.  And  the  con 
spicuous  symbol  of  his  ambiguity  is  his  alarm  clock. 
It  is  in  ruralia  but  not  of  it.  It  stands  by  a  win 
dow  that  opens  on  an  orchard,  but  it  indicates  the 
factory  and  market-place.  It  is  a  link  between  its 
owner's  two  personalities,  it  is  the  skeleton  at  the 
feast,  reminding  him,  when  he  comes  in  from  weed 
ing  the  strawberry  patch,  that  he  must  get  up  at  a 
quarter  to  seven  the  next  morning  and  hurry  to 
the  noisy  train.  Never  does  an  alarm  clock  look 
so  blatantly  mechanical  as  when  it  stands  in  a  cot 
tage  of  one  of  the  people  barbarously  termed  "com 
muters." 

For  in  the  city,  where  everything  is  mechanical, 
the  alarm  clock  seems  pleasantly  personal.  It  is  at 
home  there,  it  is  perfectly  in  keeping  with  its  sur 
roundings.  It  takes  on  as  comfortable  an  air  of 
domesticity  as  the  most  ornate  Swiss  timepiece  that 

[101] 


THE  CIRCUS  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

ever ;. said.  <wCuckoo";  it  is  contented,  sociable,  a 
member  of  the  family.  There  is  a  sense  of  strange 
ness  in  the  apartment  that  has  no  alarm  clock;  it  is 
like  a  catless  fireside. 

And  by  association  with  the  other  sounds  of 
awaking  life,  which  even  in  the  most  sordid  slum 
have  about  them  something  of  energy  and  hope, 
the  morning  chorus  of  alarm  clocks,  echoing  down 
the  paved  canyons  from  six  to  eight,  make,  in  the 
ears  of  the  unprejudiced  listener,  a  cheerful  noise. 
With  them  comes  the  mysterious  creaking  of  the 
dumb-waiter  as  it  ascends  with  the  milk,  an  ade 
quate  substitute  for  the  lowing  of  the  herd. 
Kitchens  and  kitchenettes  take  on  new  life,  and 
issue  grateful  odors  of  coffee  and  bacon.  And 
babies,  seeing  that  their  weary  parents  are  leaving 
them,  decide  at  last  that  it  is  time  to  go  to  sleep. 

An  alarm  clock  can,  on  occasion,  preach  a  ser 
mon  that  would  arouse  the  envy  of  Savonarola. 
When  the  jaded  reveler  returns  to  his  home  at  day 
break,  wastes  ten  minutes  in  a  frantic  attempt  to 
awaken  the  elevator  boy,  and  climbs,  with  cursing 
and  gnashing  of  teeth,  the  eight  flights  of  stairs  that 
lead  to  his  apartment,  then  nothing  more  sharply 
reminds  him  of  his  truancy  than  the  voices  of  the 
[102] 


THE  URBAN  CHANTICLEER 

alarm  clocks  calling  to  each  other  in  the  bedrooms 
of  his  virtuous  neighbors. 

Not  even  the  laziest  or  the  weariest  man  can  hate 
the  alarm  clock  as  he  does  the  factory  whistle.  The 
shrill  blast  that  comes  every  morning  from  the  iron 
throat  of  this  monster  has  in  it  a  note  of  contemp 
tuous  menace.  The  tired  laborers  awaken  at  their 
master's  bidding;  there  is  something  unnatural 
about  this  abrupt  wholesale  termination  of  sleep. 
But  the  discipline  of  the  alarm  clock  is  another  mat 
ter;  he  who  hears  it  listens,  it  may  be  said,  to  his 
own  voice.  He  himself  has  set  it,  he  has  fixed  the 
very  moment  of  his  own  awaking.  And  there  is 
dignity  in  observing  rules  self-imposed,  however 
irksome  they  may  be.  The  alarm  clock  is  the  sym 
bol  of  civilization,  that  is,  of  voluntary  submission, 
of  free  will  obedience. 

The  careful  reader  will  be  aware  that  many  as 
pects  of  this  excellent  device  have  been  neglected  in 
this  brief  consideration.  I  have  said  nothing  of  the 
alarm  clock's  sense  of  humor  and  of  its  willingness 
to  become  a  party  to  practical  jokes.  I  have  said 
nothing  of  how  it  may  be  pleased,  of  its  pride,  for 
instance,  in  being  referred  to  as  an  "alarum  clock." 
But  it  has  one  characteristic  which  I  must  mention, 
its  usefulness  to  the  suddenly  rich. 

[103] 


THE  CIRCUS  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

There  is  a  delightful  sort  of  novel,  Mrs.  Frances 
Hodgson  Burnett  wrote  one,  and  so  did  Mr.  H. 
G.  Wells,  which  deals  with  the  adventures  of  a 
young  man  who  has  unexpectedly  inherited  a  for 
tune.  Samuel  Warren's  "Ten  Thousand  a  Year" 
is  perhaps  the  greatest  example  of  this  manner  of 
fiction.  Well,  if  I  were  T.  Tembarom,  or  Kipps, 
or  Tittlebat  Titmouse  (Dr.  Warren's  hero),  my 
alarm  clock  would  be  necessary  for  my  first  act  of 
celebration.  Perhaps  I  should  throw  it  from  a  win 
dow,  perhaps  I  should  remove  its  bell,  perhaps  I 
should  merely  enjoy  letting  it  run  down.  At  any 
rate,  its  presence  would  be  necessary  to  the  complete 
enjoyment  of  my  new  freedom. 


[104] 


DAILY  TRAVELING 

GIVE  a  dog  a  bad  name  and  hang  him.  Call 
the  custom  of  daily  travel  "commuting"  and 
deliver  it  over  to  the  whips  of  the  scorner.  The  in 
transitive  verb  "to  commute"  is  a  barbarous  thing; 
he  who  is  called  "commuter"  is  thereby  rudely  and 
ungrammatically  taunted  with  journeying  at  re 
duced  rates,  with  being  (terrible  thought!)  the  re 
cipient  of  a  railway's  charity. 

It  is  lamentable  that  so  picturesque  a  habit  as 
daily  railway  travel  should  be  thus  misnamed.  That 
it  is  a  picturesque  habit  is  perceived  by  anyone  who 
takes  the  trouble  to  consider  it  scientifically,  shut 
ting  resolutely  from  his  mind  the  odium  brought 
upon  it  by  its  odious  name.  Suppose,  for  instance, 
that  you  were  to  go  into  the  tap-room  of  the  Mer 
maid  Tavern  some  winter  evening  during  the  reign 
of  the,  so  to  speak,  Good  Queen  Bess.  The  ven 
erable  Mr.  Alfred  Noyes  would  lead  you  to  the 
table  always  reserved  for  Messrs.  Shakespeare, 
Marlowe  and  Jonson.  You  would  take  from  your 
pocket  your  commutation  ticket,  and,  holding  aloft 

[105] 


THE  CIRCUS  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

that  cabalistically  inscribed  oblong  of  colored  card 
board,  would  sonorously  declaim: 

"By  means  of  this  talisman  I  daily  fly  across 
leagues  of  the  New  World,  from  my  cottage  in  a 
primeval  forest  to  the  heart  of  a  mighty  city.  It 
enables  me  to  lead  two  lives;  I  am  on  week  days 
urban,  sophisticated,  a  man  of  commerce;  at  night 
and  on  Sundays  I  am  a  smocked  yokel,  innocent 
among  my  innocent  vegetables.  This  little  square 
of  cardboard  enables  me  to  ride  in  a  splendid 
vehicle  propelled  by  Nature  herself  more  swiftly 
than  the  wind,  a  vehicle  which  laughs  at  time  and 
obliterates  space.  The  masters  of  romance,  bowing 
in  homage,  have  bestowed  upon  me  the  mystic  and 
awful  name  'commuter/  ' 

Such  a  tale  would  draw  Marlowe  from  his  Malm 
sey  and  thrill  the  stout  heart  of  mighty  Ben.  And 
Avon's  bard,  charmed  by  a  fact  more  golden  than 
all  his  imaginings,  would  augustly  murmur  "Very 
good,  Eddie!'' 

It  is  a  picturesque  thing,  this  daily  trip  between 
the  meadows  and  the  pavements.  By  general  con 
sent,  a  vagabond  is  the  most  romantic  of  men;  an 
allusion  to  the  open  road,  wandering  feet  or  the 
starlight  on  one's  face  is  sufficient  to  turn  an  ordi 
nary  rhymer  into  that  radiant  being,  a  "tramp- 
[106] 


DAILY  TRAVELING 

poet."  Then  what  glory  must  cling  to  those  habit 
ual  vagabonds,  those  devotees  of  the  steel  high 
way,  whom  we  call  commuters.  The  common 
tramp  seldom  covers  more  than  ten  miles  from  sun 
rise  to  sundown;  as  a  rule  his  pilgrimage  is  even 
briefer.  Yet  he  is  called  a  knight  of  the  open  road 
and  even  the  staidest  householder  has  a  sneaking 
admiration  for  him.  The  gypsy  is  no  true  vaga 
bond,  for  he  takes  with  him  his  wife,  children,  dogs, 
furniture,  and  even  his  canvas-roofed  house.  Yet 
our  writers,  from  Borrow  to  Kipling,  delight  to 
urge  us  to  ha'  done  with  the  tents  of  Shem,  dear 
lass,  and  follow  the  Romany  patteran.  The  only 
authentic  vagabond  is  he  who  every  day  goes  thirty 
miles  from  his  rural  home  to  the  city  and  every 
night  thirty  miles  back,  diving  through  mountains, 
plunging  under  rivers;  twice  on  every  week-day, 
a  wanderer  more  free  and  venturesome  than  La- 
vengro  himself. 

But  its  picturesqueness  is  not  the  sole  recom 
mendation  of  daily  railway  travel.  The  greatest  of 
its  numerous  virtues  is  that  it  is  democratic,  the 
only  absolutely  democratic  institution  in  the  United 
States  of  America.  It  is  the  mighty  leveler,  the 
irresistible  enemy  of  social  subordination. 

In  a  city,  town  or  village  in  which  the  citizens  re- 

[107] 


THE  CIRCUS  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

main  night  and  day  there  can  be  no  true  democracy. 
The  intentions  of  its  inhabitants  may  be  excellent, 
but  circumstances  will  be  stronger.  There  is  the 
minister,  there  is  the  banker,  there  is  the  doctor, 
there  is  the  grocer,  there  is  the  cobbler,  there  is  the 
minister's  hired  man.  If  a  New  England  rural 
comtnunity  is  under  observation  there  will  also  be 
noted  the  village  atheist,  the  village  drunkard,  and 
the  village  Democrat.  The  population  is  sharply 
divided  into  classes;  there  may  be  friendliness 
among  the  various  grades  of  humanity,  there  may 
be  liberty,  but  there  can  be  no  fraternity,  no  equal- 
ity. 

How  different  is  the  community  in  which  people 
merely  dwell,  having  their  business  elsewhere! 
What  is  their  occupation?  They  go  to  The  City— 
that  is  sufficient  answer  to  admit  them  to  fellow 
ship.  If  curiosity  be  still  unsatisfied,  there  is  the 
mention  of  the  name  of  a  great  firm,  and  all  is 
well. 

The  cobbler,  you  see,  keeps  his  last  in  the  city, 
away  from  his  home  and  his  neighbors ;  he  does  not 
stick  to  it,  as  the  unpleasant  adage  bids  him.  As 
he  sits  on  his  red  velvet  chair,  enjoying  with  his 
neighbors  tobacco  smoke,  rapid  travel,  and  the  news 
of  the  world,  who  shall  say  whether  he  deals  in 
[108] 


DAILY  TRAVELING 

shoes  or  in  empires?  Next  to  him  is  Dusenbury, 
who  in  addition  to  going  to  New  York,  goes  to 
Wall  Street,  rumor  has  it.  What  does  he  do  in 
Wall  Street?  Does  he  corner  the  wheat  market  or 
clean  out  waste  baskets?  Those  who  know,  who 
say  to  him,  "Sir"  or  "Hey,  you,"  are  not  his  com 
panions  on  the  7.57. 

There  is  a  certain  charm  about  what  is  called, 
ridiculously  enough,  a  "commuting  town,"  which 
is  altogether  lacking  in  other  communities.  A 
"commuting  town"  is  wholly  a  place  of  homes — 
not  of  homes  diluted  with  offices,  factories  and 
shops.  It  is  therefore  the  quintessence  of  domes 
ticity,  being  domestic  with  an  intensity  which  no 
village  which  is  remote  from  the  centers  of  civiliza 
tion,  which  furnishes  employment  and  supplies  to 
its  own  citizens  can  hope  to  approach. 

Such  a  town  is  daily  divided  and  joined,  dimin 
ished  and  completed,  thereby  keeping  in  a  state  of 
healthy  activity.  The  7.57  takes  away,  the  5.24 
brings  back.  These  recurrent  separations  and  re 
unions  are  not  without  their  ethical  and  emotional 
value. 


[109] 


INCONGRUOUS  NEW  YORK 

THAT  dislike  of  the  obvious  which  is  the  chief 
characteristic  of  American  humor  is  clearly 
exemplified  in  the  names  of  most  of  New  York's 
streets. 

The  dwellers  in  a  great  European  city  would 
give  their  proudest  avenue  of  great  shops  and  rich 
clubs  some  dignified  and  significant  title,  like  the 
Rue  de  la  Paix  or  the  Friedrichstrasse.  The 
Asiatics  would  give  it  a  name  more  definitely  de 
scriptive  and  laudatory,  like  "The  Street  of  the 
Thousand  and  One  Mirrors  of  Delight."  The  New 
Yorkers,  "laconic  and  Olympian,"  designate  it  by 
a  simple  numeral.  They  call  it  Fifth  Avenue. 

It  comes  partly  from  the  national  reticence,  this 
prosaic  name  of  a  poetic  thoroughfare.  It  is  a  man 
ifestation  of  that  attitude  of  mind  which  makes  us 
to  call  a  venerated  and  beloved  statesman  merely 
"Old  Abe,"  when  the  English  would  call  him  "the 
Grand  Old  Man"  and  the  Italians  "the  Star- 
crowned  Patriarch."  Also  it  is  a  phase  of  our 
democracy.  We  will  not  seem  to  exalt  one  avenue 
[110] 


INCONGRUOUS  NEW  YORK 

over  another  by  giving  it  a  fairer  name ;  Fifth  Ave 
nue  sounds  to  the  uninitiated  no  more  wealthy  and 
aristocratic  than  Fourth  Avenue.  Indeed,  if  there 
be  any  partiality  in  the  awarding  of  names,  it  would 
seem  to  be  exercised  in  favor  of  First  Avenue  or 
Avenue  A. 

It  may  be  objected  that  the  sponsors  of  Fifth 
Avenue  did  not  foresee  its  destined  splendor.  But 
this  fact  does  not  alter  the  case ;  we  continue  to  call 
it  Fifth  Avenue,  whereas  Europeans  would  alter 
its  name  to  something  more  appropriate  to  its 
grandeur. 

There  was  a  pilgrim  from  the  Five  Towns  who 
said  that  Fifth  Avenue  was  architecturally  the 
finest  street  in  the  world.  This  might  pass  for  a 
guest's  flattery,  were  it  not  that  Mr.  Arnold  Ben 
nett  is  of  a  nation  which  does  not  count  gracious  in 
sincerity  among  its  vices.  New  York  must  blush- 
ingly  admit  the  truth  of  his  judgment. 

It  is  not  (he  said)  harmonious.  Its  beauty  is 
made  up  of  units  of  beauty  related  only  by  position. 
This,  too,  is  characteristically  American.  Each 
building  must  have  its  distinctive  excellence. 

To  give  a  street  of  wonders  an  austere  name,  to 
build  palaces  and  fill  them  with  offices  and  shops— 
these  are  the  acts  by  which  Americans  are  known. 


THE  CIRCUS  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

And  especially  does  the  New  Yorker  delight  in  the 
whimsical,  the  inconsistent,  the  unexpected.  He  is 
like  a  child  who  likes  to  dig  in  the  sand  with  a 
silver  spoon  and  to  eat  porridge  with  a  toy  shovel. 

And  this  delicate  perversity  has  its  refreshing  as 
pect.  Fifth  Avenue,  surely,  is  a  thing  to  admire 
in  the  new  sense  as  well  as  the  old.  It  sometimes 
suggests,  perhaps,  the  ill-natured  definition  of  a 
New  Yorker  as  a  man  who,  when  he  makes  a  set 
of  chimes,  puts  it  in  a  life  insurance  building.  But 
it  more  often  suggests  a  restatement  of  this  defini 
tion;  that  is,  that  a  New  Yorker  is  a  man  who,  when 
he  makes  a  life  insurance  building,  puts  a  set  of 
chimes  in  it. 

Now,  certain  masters  of  the  mirthless  science  of 
psychology  teach  that  humor  depends  on  incon 
gruity.  Whether  or  not  this  is  true,  incongruity 
has  much  to  do  with  making  life  worth  while.  For 
incongruity  is  the  soul  of  romance. 

Nobility,  love,  courage,  beauty — the  possession 
of  these  qualities  does  not  give  to  a  man  or  a  woman 
romantic  charm.  A  person  is  a  hero  or  a  heroine  of 
romance  because  he  or  she  lives  in  a  contrasting 
place  or  age.  For  example,  a  cowboy  riding  a 
bucking  bronco  and  whirling  his  lariat  under  a  can 
vas  roof  in  some  sedate  Eastern  town  is  properly 
[112] 


INCONGRUOUS  NEW  YORK 

considered  by  the  spectators  to  be  a  romantic  fig 
ure.  A  cowboy  engaged  in  the  same  interesting 
occupations  on  a  Texas  ranch  would  not  be  con 
sidered  a  romantic  figure  by  his  neighbors.  It  is 
incongruity  of  environment  that  romantically 
transforms  him. 

People  and  things  of  bygone  ages  are  romantic 
to  us  because  the  years  have  gilded  them.  They 
were  not  romantic  to  their  contemporaries.  Says 
Edwin  Arlington  Robinson: 

Minniver  loved  the  Medici 

And  eyed  a  khaki  suit  with  loathing; 

He  missed  the  mediaeval  grace 
Of  iron  clothing. 

Exactly.  Minniver  Cheevy  was  a  true  roman 
ticist.  A  plumed  knight,  armed  cap-a-pie,  is  a 
romantic  figure  when  we  merely  see  him  through 
the  years  from  our  modern  surroundings  by  means 
of  imagination's  powerful  lens;  he  would  be  a 
figure  even  more  romantic  if  we  could  actually  see 
him  shake  his  lance  and  lead  his  warriors  against 
a  drab-suited,  machine-like  company  of  present- 
day  soldiers.  Why,  even  horse  cars,  commonplace 
enough  in  their  day,  take  on  a  certain  sentimental 
luster  when  they  lie  abandoned  in  the  outskirts  of 

[113] 


THE  CIRCUS  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

cities  proud  with  electricity.  And  a  subway  train 
will  one  day  be  as  romantic  a  spectacle  as  a  stage 
coach. 

Sometimes  a  building  is  deliberately  given  the 
romance  of  incongruity.  This  certainly  is  the  case 
with  the  New  York  Stock  Exchange.  This  splendid 
Grecian  temple,  with  its  lofty  columns  and  noble 
fa9ade,  would,  if  it  stood  in  ancient  Athens,  be,  of 
course,  beautiful,  but  in  no  respect  romantic.  It 
is  romantic  because  it  is  in  a  place  where  it  would 
not  naturally  be  expected  and  because  it  is  devoted 
to  uses  for  which  it  does  not  seem  to  have  been  in 
tended.  If  the  god  therein  worshiped  were  not 
Mammon,  but  altisonant  Jupiter,  if  white-robed 
priests  found  the  future  prefigured  in  the  warm 
blood  of  the  lambs  therein  sacrificed — then  the 
building  which  now  houses  the  clamoring  merchants 
would  be  merely  dignified  and  practical  and  not,  as 
it  is  today,  romantic. 

The  use  of  this  Grecian  temple  as  a  counting 
house  is  a  splendid  example  of  the  poetic  tendency 
of  a  popular  mind.  The  common  business  terms — 
"Bull"  and  "Bear,"  for  example — are  incongruous, 
and  therefore  romantic.  And  a  successful  business 
man  is  not  realistically  called  a  successful  business 
[114] 


INCONGRUOUS  NEW  YORK 

man;  he  is  romantically  called  a  "merchant  prince" 
or  a  "captain  of  industry." 

But  most  of  New  York's  romantic  places  get 
their  glory  not  by  plan,  but  by  the  accident  of  de 
sign.  You  turn  the  corner  from  a  sombre  street 
lined  by  tall  concrete  and  steel  structures  that  ob 
viously  are  of  your  own  period  and  come  suddenly 
upon  a  mellow  bit  of  New  Amsterdam.  You  would 
not  be  surprised  to  see  old  Peter  Stuyvesant  stump 
down  Coenties  Slip  and  drop  in  for  his  morning's 
Hollands  at  "22%,"  across  the  way.  There  are 
streets  and  squares  and  alleys  in  downtown  New 
York  that  look  now  exactly  as  they  did  when  Times 
Square  was  a  cow  pasture  and  the  Bowery  really 
bowery.  But  these  places  were  not  romantic  to  the 
citizens  of  that  time;  they  would  not  be  romantic 
to  us  if  by  some  strange  backward  transmigration 
of  souls  we  should  inhabit  a  vanished  century. 

No,  we  are  fortunate  to  live  when  Battery  Place 
and  Coenties  Slip  have  acquired  romance's  glamour. 
Incongruity  is  the  soul  of  romance.  And  these 
quaint  time-hallowed  places  have  the  loveliest 
sort  of  incongruity — the  magical  incongruity  of 
archaisms. 


[115] 


IN  MEMORIAM:  JOHN  BUNNY 

THERE  was  a  clown  named  Joseph  Grimaldi. 
And  when  his  agile  limbs  and  mobile  features 
were  stilled  by  death  there  lingered  in  the  minds 
of  the  thousands  who  had  laughed  at  him  in  Sadler's 
Wells  and  Covent  Garden  only  the  memory  of  their 
mirth. 

There  was  a  clown  named  John  Bunny.  Now 
he  is  dead.  But  we  still  may  see,  and  our  children's 
children  may  see,  the  gestures  and  grimaces  that 
made  him  a  welcome  visitor  in  every  quarter  of  the 
globe.  For  by  grace  of  the  motion-picture  camera, 
John  Bunny's  art  endures. 

It  is  art,  this  power  of  conveying  ideas  without 
the  use  of  words,  of  exciting  laughter  by  actually 
being,  instead  of  saying,  a  joke.  It  is  the  difficult 
and  venerable  art  of  the  clown,  the  art  of  the 
shaven-headed  mime  in  variegated  robes  whose 
antics  drove  care  from  Caesar's  furrowed  brow,  the 
art  of  Garrick's  harlequin  friend,  John  Rich,  and 
of  the  mirth-compelling  Pinkethman,  whose  "frolic 
gestures"  won  the  praise  of  Alexander  Pope. 
[116] 


INi  MEMORIAM:    JOHN  BUNNY 

Of  course,  John  Bunny  could  play  in  speaking 
parts.  Before  he  found  his  real  vocation,  before 
the  motion  pictures  claimed  him  as  their  great 
comedian,  he  trod  the  boards  of  the  "legitimate" 
stage,  and  with  no  small  success.  He  ran  the  theat 
rical  gamut  from  minstrelsy  to  Shakespeare. 
Annie  Russell,  Maude  Adams,  Weber  and  Fields 
— these  are  a  few  of  the  stars  whose  radiance  he 
augmented  during  the  first  twenty-five  years  of 
his  professional  life.  But  to-day  the  regular  drama 
offers  little  opportunity  to  the  true  clown,  and  it 
was  not  until  he  appeared  on  the  screen  that  John 
Bunny  reach  his  own  public — that  is,  the  world. 

The  word  clown  has  fallen  of  late  years  into  un 
merited  disrepute.  Impressionistic  critics  of  the 
drama  attempt  to  disparage  a  comedian  by  calling 
him  a  "mere  clown."  They  might  as  well  call  Mr. 
Sargent  a  "mere  painter,"  or  M.  Rodin  a  "mere 
sculptor."  What  they  mean  is  that  the  comedian 
of  their  discontent  is  not  a  clown  at  all.  For  the 
grotesquely  clad  men,  with  whitened,  expression 
less  faces,  who  tumble  about  the  circus  ring,  have 
no  right  to  the  exclusive  possession  of  their  title. 
Indeed,  few  of  them  are  genuine  clowns  in  the  best 
sense  of  the  word,  for  most  of  them  cause  laughter 
by  obvious  horseplay,  not  by  the  true  clown  methods 

[117] 


THE  CIRCUS  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

of  elaborate  pantomime  and  striking  facial  contor 
tions. 

The  greatest  comedians  have  been  the  greatest 
clowns.  Even  the  most  brilliant  lines,  spoken  most 
winningly,  fail  of  their  effect  upon  the  audience  un 
less  the  speaker  has  a  clown's  power  to  act  with 
his  features.  And  if  a  clown  be  great  enough  he 
may  safely  dispense  with  words — as  John  Bunny 
did. 

The  English  pantomime  even  in  Thackeray's 
day  had  fallen  from  its  once  high  place.  The  love 
ly  Columbine  remained  and  the  sprightly  Harle 
quin  and  the  grotesque  Pantaloon.  But  there  were 
songs  and  dialogue ;  the  entertainment  was  simply  a 
sort  of  vaudeville,  not  genuine  pantomime  at  all. 
It  was  not  until  the  huge,  clicking  camera  made 
lasting  the  gestures  of  the  actors  that  the  art  of 
pantomime  came  back  to  its  own. 

There  is  a  word  used  by  men  and  women  who 
have  to  do  with  this  great  branch  of  the  world's 
amusement  which  deserves  immortality.  It  is  the 
verb  "register."  An  actor  registers  grief,  or  amuse 
ment,  or  astonishment.  That  is,  he  assumes  an  ex 
pression  which,  when  recorded  by  the  camera  and 
exhibited,  will  convey  his  emotion  to  the  audience. 
In  that  one  word  there  is  a  valuable  treatise  on 
[118] 


IN  MEM  OKI  AM:   JOHN  BUNNY 

the  dramatic  art.  The  inferior  actor  is  content  with 
expressing  an  emotion.  The  true  actor  registers  it. 

And  what  a  sense  of  permanence  is  in  that  word 
"register!"  Alfred  de  Musset  and  many  another 
sentimental  poet  lamented  the  ephemeral  nature 
of  the  actor's  fame.  The  painter,  it  has  been  said, 
the  writer  and  the  sculptor,  live  in  their  works. 
But  the  actor's  art  perishes  with  him ;  when  he  dies, 
the  memory  of  his  expressive  face  and  graceful 
form  goes  into  the  oblivion  that  keeps  the  echoes 
of  his  golden  voice. 

Well,  we  have  changed  all  that.  The  number  of 
people  who  lose  their  cares  under  the  spell  of  John 
Bunny's  magic  to-day  is  greater  than  it  was  a 
year  ago.  The  motion  pictures  have  made  the 
actor's  chances  for  immortality  equal  with  those  of 
his  fellows  in  the  other  arts. 

Enemies  of  the  motion  picture  (there  really  are 
such  people)  say  that  the  humor  of  such  entertain 
ments  is  not  true  humor,  but  vulgar  and  barbarous 
horseplay,  requiring  no  art.  Anyone,  they  say, 
can  get  a  laugh,  as  Charlie  Chaplin  does,  by  being 
knocked  down  by  an  automobile  or  by  being  grossly 
fat,  like  John  Bunny. 

The  adequate  answer  to  a  critic  who  makes  such 
statements  as  these  is  "Go  out  in  the  street  and  get 

[119] 


THE  CIRCUS  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

knocked  down  by  an  automobile."  This  may  be 
the  remark  which  actors  (and  sensitive  producers) 
commonly  feel  like  making  to  dramatic  critics,  but 
in  this  case  it  should  have  no  tinge  of  bitterness. 
Go  out  in  the  street  and  get  knocked  down  by  an 
automobile.  See  if  the  people  laugh  at  you  as  they 
laugh  at  Chaplin.  They  will  laugh  at  you  only  if 
you  are  artist  enough  to  be  knocked  down  humor 
ously — as  Chaplin  is  knocked  down. 

And,  as  to  John  Bunny's  success  being  due  to 
his  fatness,  that  criticism  is  generally  made  by  peo 
ple  who  never  saw  "Autocrat  of  Flapjack  Junc 
tion"  or  "Love's  Old  Dream,"  or  by  rival  actors. 
It  is  true  that  your  true  clown  always  is  quick  to 
utilize  his  physical  peculiarities  as  accessories  to  his 
acting.  The  jesters  of  Marie  de  Medici  made  fun 
of  their  own  hunched  backs  or  dwarfed  forms.  John 
Bunny  had  as  good  a  right  to  turn  his  fatness  into 
dramatic  capital  as  Sarah  Bernhardt  has  to  do  the 
same  thing  with  her  slenderness.  It  is  a  principle 
of  subjective  artistic  expression — the  same  princi 
ple  as  that  by  which  Heine  made  his  little  songs  out 
of  his  great  woes. 

But  the  physical  peculiarity  alone  is  not  enough. 
John  Bunny  was  gifted  by  nature  for  his  roles. 
But  he  would  have  been  a  great  clown  even  had 
[120] 


IN  MEMORIAM:    JOHN  BUNNY 

he  been  built  like  John  Drew.  He  would  have 
made  his  shapeliness  what  he  made  his  unshapeli- 
ness — something  ridiculously  amusing. 

If  fatness  alone  was  the  source  of  his  success,  how 
crowded  his  profession  would  now  be!  But  this 
is  not  the  case.  Thousands,  perhaps,  of  motion- 
picture  audiences  have  watched  Mr.  Taft  serenely 
cross  the  screen,  or  mutely  seem  to  make  a  speech. 
Undoubtedly,  they  have  thereby  been  edified.  But 
they  have  not  rocked  from  side  to  side  with  unex- 
tinguishable  laughter,  and  thereafter  burst  into 
shouts  of  mirth  at  the  mention  of  the  ex-President's 
name. 

No,  people  did  not  laugh  at  John  Bunny  because 
he  was  fat,  or  because  he  fell  from  horses  and  auto 
mobiles  and  aeroplanes,  and  submitted  to  various 
picturesque  forms  of  assault  and  battery  for  their 
amusement.  They  laughed  at  him  because  he  was 
fat  humorously,  because  he  fell  from  vehicles 
humorously,  because  he  was  a  great  clown — that  is, 
a  master  of  a  difficult  and  important  branch  of  dra 
matic  art. 

The  motion-picture  producers  may  not  be  aware 
of  the  fact,  but  they  have  performed  a  valuable 
service  to  the  stage  in  reviving  the  art  of  panto 
mime.  The  actor  in  the  spoken  drama  will  be  less 

[121] 


THE  CIRCUS  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

likely  to  be  a  mere  voice  when  he  sees  his  brother 
on  the  screen  act  with  his  whole  body. 

Is  it  possible  that  the  importance  of  the  human 
voice  has  been  exaggerated?  Certainly  the  mechan 
ical  reproduction  of  the  spoken  word  has  not  cap 
tured  the  world's  attention  as  has  the  reproduction 
of  motion.  The  phonograph,  of  course,  brings  the 
lovely  notes  of  the  singers  to  ears  that  otherwise 
would  never  thrill  with  melody.  It  has  been  used 
as  an  instrument  by  which  a  political  speaker  might 
address  at  one  time  twenty  audiences  scattered 
across  the  continent,  and  it  has  delighted  with 
humorous  dialogue  those  who  were  far  from 
theaters.  But  as  an  interpreter  of  great  literature, 
the  needle  revolves  impotently  upon  its  waxen 
cylinder. 

There  have  been  successful  attempts  to  synchro 
nize  the  phonograph  and  the  motion-picture  ma 
chine,  to  cause  the  words  to  accompany  the  action. 
It  may  be  that  these  devices  will  one  day  be  widely 
popular.  But  I  hope  not.  For  that  would  destroy 
the  greatest  value  of  motion-picture  acting,  the 
silent  but  complete  expression  of  thought.  The 
motion  picture  is  the  renascence  of  pantomime. 

When  Colley  Gibber  looked  through  his  jeweled 
quizzing  glass  at  a  strange  dumb-show  drama  newly 
[122] 


IN  MEMORIAM:   JOHN  BUNNY 

brought  to  England  from  merry  France,  a  repre 
sentation  of  the  legend  of  Venus  and  Mars,  he  said 
that  it  was  "form'd  into  a  connected  presentation 
of  Dances  in  Character,  wherein  the  Passions  were 
so  happily  expressed,  and  the  whole  Story  so  in 
telligibly  told,  by  a  mute  Narration  of  Gesture  only, 
that  even  thinking  Spectators  allow'd  it  both  a 
pleasing  and  rational  Entertainment."  It  was  this 
"pleasing  and  rational  Entertainment"  which  de 
veloped  into  the  great  English  pantomime,  which 
popular  custom  (always  fond  of  tradition  and 
ritual)  honored  by  association  with  the  mighty 
festival  of  Christmas. 

And  the  English  pantomime's  greater  descend 
ant  is  to  be  seen  on  many  a  modern  film.  Still  the 
vivacious  lover  flees  from  the  comic  policemen  and 
the  irate  father,  still  Columbine  is  fair,  although 
she  bears  a  less  beautiful  name  and  has  changed  her 
airy  spangled  draperies  for  a  modern  garb. 

Why  has  no  enterprising  producer  given  us  a 
real  old  English  pantomime  in  the  films,  with  all 
the  conventional  characters?  What  a  Columbine 
Mary  Pickford  would  make!  And  how  excellently 
would  Charles  Chaplin's  deft  stumble  suit  Harle 
quin!  There  could  be  transformation  scenes  that 
would  delight  the  genial  ghosts  of  Lamb  and 

[123] 


THE  CIRCUS  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

Thackeray.     But  who  would  be  clown — now  that 
John  Bunny  is  dead? 

The  written  word  sometimes  loses  its  power  to 
bring  laughter  as  the  years  roll  by.  Topical  al 
lusions,  phrases,  and  sentiments  that  amuse  us  will 
bring  no  mirth  to  the  hearts  of  our  grandchildren. 
But  there  are  certain  things  that  are  elementally 
funny,  that  make  all  people  laugh  who  have  any 
laughter  in  their  souls.  And  one  of  these  things 
is  the  face  of  John  Bunny. 


[124] 


THE  DAY  AFTER  CHRISTMAS 

OF  course,  people  still  ride  on  the  elevated  rail 
ways..  But  not  the  people  who  used  to  be 
taken  over  by  their  mothers  from  Jersey  City  on 
the  Cortlandt  Street  Ferry  about  once  every 
month,  and  then  up  Sixth  Avenue  by  the  elevated 
en  route  for  the  shops.  These  people  now  know 
the  swift  and  monotonous  tube  train  instead  of  the 
rakish  ferryboat,  the  dull  subway  instead  of  the 
stimulating  elevated  railway.  And  even  if  they 
knelt  upon  the  seats  of  the  subway  car,  their  rub 
bers  projecting  into  the  aisles  and  their  faces 
pressed  against  the  windows,  they  would  see  only 
blank  walls  and  dismal  stations  instead  of  other 
people's  Christmas  trees. 

These  evanescent  bits  of  glory  lent  special  de 
light  to  aerial  journey  ings  for  weeks  after  Christ 
mas.  For,  in  defiance  of  the  Twelfth  Night  con 
vention,  certain  citizens  were  wont  to  keep  their 
Christmas  trees  in  place  until  February.  And,  in 
the  opinion  of  the  tenants  of  the  third  stories  of 
the  tenements  (apartment  houses  is  the  more  cour- 

[125] 


THE  CIRCUS  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

teous  word)  which  bordered  the  elevated,  the  place 
of  the  Christmas  tree  was  close  up  against  the  front 
window,  where  all  the  world  could  enjoy  its  green 
and  gold  and  red. 

Like  nearly  all  genuine  vulgar  customs  (vulgar 
is  used  in  its  most  honorable  sense)  this  habit  of 
showing  the  public  the  home's  chief  splendor  was 
(or  is,  for  undoubtedly  firs  dressed  for  holiday  still 
brighten  some  lower  Sixth  Avenue  windows)  based 
on  generous  courtesy.  It  was  not  possible  for  Mr. 
Tenement  to  keep  open  flat,  so  to  speak,  at  Christ 
mas  time;  to  summon  all  Sixth  Avenue  in  to  par 
take  of  a  bowl  of  wassail  that  steamed  upon  his  gas 
range.  But  he  performed  all  the  hospitality  that 
his  ungentle  residence  allowed;  he  placed  his  bit  of 
greenwood  with  its  cardboard  angel,  its  red  paper 
bells,  and  its  strings  of  tinsel,  where  it  would  give 
to  the  greatest  possible  number  the  same  delight 
that  it  gave  to  its  owner. 

It  is,  you  observe,  in  your  own  psychological 
way,  the  Rogers  Group  principle.  Your  grand 
mother  put  "Going  for  the  Cows,"  you  remem 
ber,  on  the  marble  top  of  the  walnut  table  by  the 
window  in  the  front  parlor.  The  Nottingham  lace 
curtains  were  parted  just  above  the  head  of  the 
boy  who  was  urging  the  dog  after  the  woodchuck. 
[126] 


THE  DAY  AFTER  CHRISTMAS 

And  everybody  who  went  up  or  down  Maple  Ave 
nue  got  a  good  view  of  that  masterpiece  of  realism. 
Therein  your  grandmother  showed  truer  courtesy 
than  did  you  when  you  put  Rodin's  "Le  Baiser" 
in  that  niche  above  the  second  landing  of  your  stair 
way. 

The  same  quality  of  almost  quixotic  generosity  is 
suggested  by  the  composition  of  the  old-fashioned 
holly  wreaths,  which,  hung  in  the  windows,  showed 
to  passers-by  lustrous  green  leaves  and  scarlet 
berries,  and  to  those  who  hung  them  only  a  circle 
of  pale  stems  and  wire.  Even  the  lithographers 
maintain  this  courteous  tradition ;  they  stamp  their 
cardboard  holly  wreaths  on  only  one  side.  And  this 
is  the  side  which  is  to  face  the  street. 

Well,  these  fenestral  firs  and  hollies  exist,  and 
they  are  among  the  numerous  joys  of  the  days  that 
follow  Christmas.  These  post-Christmas  days 
shine  with  a  light  softer,  but  perhaps  more  comfort 
able,  than  that  of  the  great  feast  itself. 

Particularly  is  this  true  of  the  first  day  after 
Christmas — especially  when  that  day  is  Sunday. 
In  England,  of  course,  as  in  the  time  of  the  late 
Samuel  Pickwick,  Esq.,  who  brought  about  the  re 
nascence  of  Christmas,  this  is  called  Boxing  Day, 
not  because  it  is  the  occasion  of  fistic  encounters, 

[127] 


THE  CIRCUS  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

but  because  it  is  the  time  appointed  for  the  dis 
tribution  of  those  more  or  less  spontaneous  expres 
sions  of  good  will  which  are  called  Christmas  boxes. 
Its  more  orthodox  title  is  Saint  Stephen's  Day;  it 
is,  you  know,  the  day  on  which  the  illustrious  King 
Wenceslaus,  with  the  assistance  of  his  page,  did  his 
noble  almoning.  Says  the  old  carol: 

Good  King  Wenceslaus  looked  out 

On  the  feast  of  Stephen, 
When  the  snow  lay  round  about, 

Deep,  and  crisp,  and  even; 
Brightly  shone  the  moon  that  night, 

Though  the  frost  was  cruel; 
When  a  poor  man  came  in  sight, 

Gathering  winter  fuel. 

"Hither,  page,  and  stand  by  me, 

See  thou  dost  it  telling 
Yonder  peasant,  who  is  he, 

Where  and  what  his  dwelling?" 
"Sire,  he  lives  a  good  league  hence, 

Underneath  the  mountain, 
Over  by  the  forest  fence, 

By  Saint  Agnes  fountain." 

"Bring  me  flesh  and  bring  me  wine, 

Bring  me  pine  logs  hither; 
Thou  and  I  will  see  him  dine, 

When  we  bear  them  thither." 
[128] 


THE  DAY  AFTER  CHRISTMAS 

Page  and  monarch  forth  they  went, 

Forth  they  went  together 
Through  the  night  wind's  wild  lament 

And  the  wintry  weather. 

We  are  not  old  English  Kings,  so  instead  of 
having  our  page  bring  flesh  and  wine  to  the  poor 
man  on  Saint  Stephen's  Day,  we  give  a  dollar  to 
the  youth  from  the  still  vexed  Bermuthes  who  chap 
erons  the  elevator  in  our  apartment  house,  and 
for  weeks  before  Christmas  we  affix  to  the  flaps  of 
the  envelopes  containing  our  letters  little  stamps 
bearing  libelous  caricatures  of  Saint  Nicholas  of 
Bari.  Theoretically  this  last  process  provides  a 
modicum  of  Christmas  cheer  for  certain  carefully 
selected  and  organized  poor  people. 

However  this  may  be,  the  fact  remains  that  the 
day  after  Christmas  is  a  very  good  day,  indeed. 
The  excitement  of  giving  and  receiving  has  passed 
away;  there  remains  the  quieter  joy  of  contem 
plation.  And  since  this  year  the  day  after  Christ 
mas  is  Sunday,  this  contemplation  will  not  be  dis 
turbed  by  the  arrival  of  the  postman,  who,  a  re 
lentless  bill-bringer,  is,  like  the  Greeks,  to  be  feared 
even  when  bearing  gifts. 

And,  in  spite  of  the  remarks  of  every  humorist 
who  ever  borrowed  from  his  mother-in-law  two 

[129] 


THE  CIRCUS  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

cents  to  put  on  an  envelope  which  should  carry  a 
joke  about  her  to  an  editor,  this  post- Christmas 
meditation  nearly  always  is  pleasant.  It  is  assisted 
by  the  consumption  of  wife-bestowed  cigars,  which 
(again  despite  the  humorists !)  are  better  than  those 
a  man  buys  for  himself.  It  is  a  pleasant  meditation, 
for  its  subjects  are  things  given  and  things  received, 
good  deeds  done  and  good  deeds  experienced. 

It  also  contains,  this  day-after-Christmas  feel 
ing,  a  quality  of  reconciliation.  Not  of  reconcilia 
tion  with  ancient  enemies — this  was  all  orthodoxly 
attended  to  on  Christmas  Eve — but  of  reconcilia 
tion  with  affairs,  of  readjustment. 

On  Christmas  Day  there  may  have  been  some 
slight  disappointment,  some  fly  in  the  ointment,  or, 
worse  still,  in  the  punch.  Forgetting  for  a  moment 
that  you  were  just  now  pictured  smoking  cigars 
presented  to  you  by  your  wife,  let  us  consider  you 
to  be,  as  you  probably  are,  a  young  woman  of  some 
eighteen  Summers  and  perhaps  an  equal  number 
of  Winters.  It  is  the  day  after  Christmas;  it  is 
•( although  you  are  unaware  of  the  fact)  Saint 
Stephen's  Day.  Yesterday,  although  you  en 
deavored  to  conceal  the  fact,  only  revealing  it  in 
the  unnecessary  viciousness  with  which  you 
scrubbed  the  remains  of  a  red  and  white  striped 
[130] 


THE  DAY  AFTER  CHRISTMAS 

candy  basket  from  the  countenance  of  your  infant 
brother — yesterday,  I  repeat,  you  were  annoyed. 
And  the  cause  of  your  annoyance  was  that  you  re 
ceived  from  the  amorous  Theophilus  a  paltry  dozen, 
instead  of  twenty-four  or  thirty-six,  American 
Beauties.  Nlow,  however,  during  your  post-Christ 
mas  meditation,  your  annoyance  is  swept  away  by 
the  refreshing  thought  that  Theophilus  will  now 
have  twelve  or  twenty-four  dollars  more  to  invest 
in  that  extraordinary  solitaire  diamond  ring  with 
which  he  purposes  to  decorate  your  not  too  reluc 
tant  hand  as  soon  as  people  begin  to  see  through 
your  bluff  of  not  being  engaged.  This  thought 
cheers  you  considerably,  and  you  dreamily  give  the 
aforesaid  infant  brother  permission  to  consume  a 
barley  sugar  elephant,  which  makes  him  very  unwell. 
Or,  let  us,  on  the  other  hand,  suppose  that  you, 
who  are  now  reading  this  inquiry  into  the  theory  of 
motives  and  ideas,  are  that  infant  brother  himself. 
Your  age,  we  will  say,  is  three,  and  you  are,  we  re 
gret  to  say,  somewhat  sticky.  Nevertheless,  your 
frame  of  mind  is,  on  the  whole,  more  satisfactory 
than  it  was  yesterday.  You  had  in  all  confidence 
requested  Santa  Claus  to  bring  you  a  large  live 
baboon.  Instead,  he  brought  you  a  small  tin 
monkey  on  a  stick. 

[131] 


THE  CIRCUS  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

This  was  a  genuine  disappointment,  as  poignant 
ly  felt  as  will  be  any  more  obvious  tragedy  of  your 
adult  years.  But,  like  all  sorrows  of  childhood,  it 
had  the  blessed  quality  of  brevity.  Now,  on  the 
day  after  Christmas,  you  contemplate  with  favor 
your  tin  monkey.  One  of  his  legs  is  broken,  but 
he  has  come  off  his  stick,  and  is  therefore  the  more 
agreeable  companion.  Your  father's  apology  for 
Santa  Claus — to  the  effect  that  the  baboon  of  your 
desire  would  have  walked  off  with  your  stockings  if 
he  had  been  placed  in  them — seems  reasonable. 
And  there  is  manna  for  your  soul  in  the  thought 
that  your  father  will  take  you  to  the  Bronx  Zoo  this 
afternoon,  and  that  you  then  can  show  your  tin 
monkey  to  the  baboon  that  lives  there. 

This  peaceful  meditation  is  one  of  the  most  de 
lightfully  comfortable  features  of  the  day  after 
Christmas.  This  day  has  not  the  concentrated  ex 
citement  of  Christmas.  It  is,  I  think,  the  most  rest 
ful  day  in  the  year.  It  is  not  marked,  like  January 
2,  with  the  shock  of  receiving  bills  and  the  strain 
of  keeping  new  resolutions.  It  is  a  delightfully 
lazy  day,  a  sort  of  sublimated  Sunday  afternoon. 

And  one  conclusion  which  you  should  draw  from 
your  St.  Stephen's  Day  meditation  is  that  the  no 
bility  of  Christmas  traditions  and  customs  is  proved 
[132] 


THE  DAY  AFTER  CHRISTMAS 

by  their  surviving  the  most  unfavorable,  even  ab 
surd,  conditions  of  life.  It  was  not  difficult  for  the 
Puritans  to  destroy  the  Maypole ;  its  gay  garlands 
never  rose  from  the  dust  into  which  their  iron  heels 
trod  them.  But  the  Christmas  tree — which  even 
more  than  the  Maypole  was  an  idolatrous  abomina 
tion  to  those  of  our  forefathers  who  turned  "the 
sword  of  the  Lord  and  of  Gideon"  against  the  prim 
itive  red  citizens  of  New  England — the  Christmas 
tree  blooms  with  new  splendor  every  year.  It  is 
set  up  even  in  the  conventicle  and  New  Salems 
which  the  Pilgrims  established,  and  as  its  green 
branches  glow  with  their  precious  freight  of  scarlet 
and  gold,  around  it  dance — tango,  in  fact — the 
descendants  of  John  Alden  and  Priscilla  Mullens. 

But  the  Christmas  tree  and  its  attendant  glories 
have  survived  an  assault  sterner  than  that  of  the 
Puritans.  They  are  healthily  surviving  modern 
metropolitan  conditions — the  deadly  foe  of  many 
gracious  things.  And  the  mere  fact  of  survival  is 
itself  beautiful.  It  is  very  fine,  of  course,  for  Santa 
Claus  to  clamber  down  the  broad  chimney  of  a 
great  farmhouse.  But  it  is  really  noble  of  him  to 
penetrate  the  mysterious  smokestacks  of  a  New 
York  building,  and,  making  some  subtle  use,  I  sup 
pose,  of  the  steam  radiator,  to  visit  every  apartment 

[133] 


THE  CIRCUS  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

which  has  its  complement  of  childhood.  It  is  ad 
mirable  for  a  country  child  to  believe  in  Santa 
Clans ;  but  how  much  more  admirable  is  the  faith  of 
the  city  child,  the  faith  which  stands  the  shock  of 
the  imitation  Santa  Clauses  who  strut  about  the 
department  stores  and  beg  at  every  corner! 

These  things,  I  said,  are  natural  fruits  of  after- 
Christmas  meditations.  And  the  Christmas  tree 
remains — although  the  gifts  that  surrounded  it 
have  been  taken  away,  it  is  a  pleasanter  sight  than 
it  was  yesterday,  because  it  is  already  a  beautiful 
old  friend,  a  friend  to  whom  we  are  grateful.  It 
does  not  look  ridiculous  because  its  great  day  is 
gone,  as,  for  example,  a  fire-cracker  looks  ridicu 
lous  on  July  5.  For  Christmas  is  more  than  a  day, 
it  is  a  season,  of  which  December  25  is  only  the  com 
mencement.  And  as  the  Christmas  tree  seems 
pleasanter  and  more  friendly  when  some  of  its 
needles  have  formed  little  green  aromatic  heaps  on 
the  carpet,  and  when  the  china  angel  and  two  or 
three  of  the  red  glass  balls  have  been  taken  down 
for  the  baby  to  play  with — so  does  the  Christmas 
season  seem  pleasanter  and  more  friendly  when  its 
first  great  feast  and  pageant  has  come  to  its  joy 
ous  close  and  become  a  part  of  time's  rich  treasury 
of  golden  days. 
[134] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 


THE  ASHMAN 

PEOPLE 
AN  ASHMAN. 
A  POLICEMAN. 
A  LITTLE  GIRL  IN  GREEN. 

SCENE  :  A  city  alley.    The  ASHMAN  is  fasten 
ing  a  nosebag  on  his  horse,  which  is  harnessed 
to  a  wagon  half  -filed  with  ashes.    A  POLICEMAN 
is  watching  him. 
TIME: 


POLICEMAN 
What  do  you  feed  him?    Ashes? 

ASHMAN 

No,  I  don't! 

I  feed  him  Harps.    Come  over  here,  you  boob, 
And  let  him  bite  your  face,  he's  hungry! 

POLICEMAN 

Aw! 

You're  nothing  but  a  Harp  yourself,  you  poor 
Old  God-forsaken  ashman;  Or  a  wop, 
Or  some  fool  kind  of  foreigner. 

[137] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

ASHMAN 

O  Hell! 

You  make  me  sick,  you  big  fat  pie-faced  mutt! 
Get  out,  you  spoil  my  horse's  appetite! 

POLICEMAN 

I'd  hate  to  be  your  horse,  but  then  I  guess 
I'd  rather  be  your  horse  than  you.     (Exit.) 

(A  LITTLE  GIRL  IN  GREEN  appears  from  behind 
the  wagon.) 

LITTLE  GIRL 
Hello! 

ASHMAN 

Hello  there,  kiddo!    Where  did  you  come  from? 
(Climbs  to  his  seat  on  the  wagon,  takes  out  a  tin 
pail,  and  begins  to  eat  his  lunch.) 

LITTLE  GIRL 
I  think  I'd  like  some  bread  and  butter,  please! 

ASHMAN 

All  right,  old  girl,  just  take  a  bite  of  that. 
(Tosses  his  half  loaf  down  to  her.) 

LITTLE  GIRL 

There  isn't  any  butter  on  it. 
ASHMAN 

No. 

I  haven't  got  no  butter.    But  it's  good, 
[138] 


THE  ASHMAN 

It's  first-rate  bread,  all  right. 

LITTLE  GIRL  (tossing  back  the  loaf,  from  which  she 

has  taken  a  bite) 
Thanks  very  much!  Thanks,  Captain  Thunder! 

ASHMAN 

Huh? 

You're  a  queer  kid,  all  right,  and  hungry,  too, 
To  eat  dry  bread.  (Eats  some  of  the  bread.)    Why 

damn  my  eyes!    God's  wounds! 
Here's   scurvy   provender.      (Throws   the   bread 

down.)     And  scurvy  mirth! 
What,  Kate!  Dear  Kate  o'  the  Green,  well  met, 

well  met, 

Slip  up  and  sit  beside  me,  lass !    It's  not 
The  first  time  you  have  been  upon  this  seat. 

LITTLE  GIRL  (climbing  up  beside  him) 
No,  Captain,  I  should  know  the  Royal  Mail, 
But  when  did  you  take  up  the  coaching  trade? 
I  had  as  soon  expect  to  see  old  Dick 
Throw  leg  across  your  Monmouth's  gleaming  back, 
Thrust  pistols  in  his  belt,  and  gallop  off 
To  make  his  fortune  in  the  light  o'  the  moon, 
As  to  find  you,  the  Master  of  the  Heath, 
The  Devil's  Treasurer,  the  Velvet  Mask, 
The  Silver  Pistoleer,  the  Winged  Thief, 

[139] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

Sitting  with  down-cast  Sabbath-keeping  eyes, 
Sad  lips,  and  nose  all  fixed  for  droning  psalms, 
In  old  Dick's  place  upon  the  Royal  Mail. 
A  proper  driver  for  a  coach  and  four! 

ASHMAN 

Ha'  done!    God's  mercy  on  us!    Let  me  speak, 
And  I  will  tell  you  such  a  waggery 
Will  make  you  laugh  and  split  your  pretty  sides: 
I  stole  the  Royal  Mail! 

LITTLE  GIRL 
You  stole  the  Mail? 

ASHMAN 

Aye,  prigged  it,  Kate!  Why,  here  it  is,  you  see, 
Box,  boot  and  wheels,  four  horses  and  a  whip, 
And  on  the  door  King  George's  coat  of  arms. 
All  mine,  good  lass,  all  mine.    But  for  a  price, 
A  bitter  price,  dear  Kate.    For  Monmouth's  dead! 

LITTLE  GIRL 

What,  Monmouth,  best  of  horses,  is  he  dead? 
O  Captain  Thunder,  never  tell  me  that ! 
Why,  all  the  world  holds  not  another  horse 
So  glossy  black,  so  fleet,  so  wise,  so  kind! 

ASHMAN 
Yes,  Monmouth's  dead.    Dick  shot  him  through  the 

heart, 
[140] 


THE  ASHMAN 

And  Monmouth  dropped  without  a  whinny.    But 
I  paid  Dick  back.    O  Monmouth  is  avenged! 
Now,  hear  me,  Kate !    I  stopped  the  Royal  Mail 
Last  night  at  twelve  o'clock  at  Carter's  Cross, 
Says  I,  "Stand  now!    And  let  me  have  the  bags — 
That's  all  I  want  to-night!    Hand  over,  there!" 
Dick  pulls  his  leaders  on  their  haunches.     "Why," 
Says  he,  "it's  Captain  Thunder!    By  my  wig! 
Just  help  yourself!"    I  prigged  his  pistol  belt 
And  rode  around  to  look  inside  the  coach. 
I  got  the  bags.    The  passengers  were  three. 
My  Lord  of  Bath  and  Wells- 

LITTLE  GIRL 
A  Bishop,  what? 

ASHMAN 

Aye,  that  he  is ;  white  wig  and  bands  and  all. 
Yes,  he's  a  Bishop.    And  there  was  his  wife, 
(A  big  fat  monster  of  a  wife)  and  then 
There  was  a  little  wizened-looking  thing, 
A  sort  of  curate.    Well,  I  looked  at  them 
And  laughed  to  see  them  tremble  in  their  shoes. 
"Good  e'en,  my  Lord,"  says  I,  and  doffed  my  hat. 
"How  do  you  like  the  Royal  Mail?"    Says  he: 
"O  good  Sir  Highwayman,  pray  let  me  go, 
Our  coach  broke  down  at  York,  and  so  we  took 
This  public  carrier,  this  dreadful  thing, 

[141] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

This  Royal  Mail.    O  will  you  let  us  pass? 

I  must  get  into  Hull  by  dawn,  and  sleep, 

For  I  confirm  an  hundred  souls  at  noon." 

I  listened  to  him,  Kate,  and  did  not  see 

The  old  fox  slip  a  pistol  up  to  Dick. 

But,  bang!     Hell's  fury!    Down  fell  Monmouth, 

dead. 

And  off  I  stumbled  in  the  ditch!    Well,  Kate, 
Dick  aimed  for  me,  you  see,  and  got  the  horse. 
And  I  got  Dick.    I  got  him  through  the  head. 
And  then  I  joined  the  Bishop  once  again. 
"Come  out,  my  Lord,  and  strip !"  says  I.    "What, 

strip?" 

Says  he,  and  let  his  jaw  fall  on  his  chest. 
"Yes,  strip!"  says  I,  and  pulls  his  great-coat  off: 
"Yes,  strip!"  says  I,  and  throws  his  wig  away: 
"Yes,  strip!"  says  I,  and  pulls  his  breeches  off: 
And  there  he  stands  and  shivers,  pink  and  fat. 
"Now,  Madame  Bishopess,"  says  I,  "pray  do 
Poor  Captain  Thunder  so  much  courtesy 
As  to  ride  by  him  on  the  way  to  town." 
She  screamed  and  fought.    I  took  her  in  my  arms 
And  heaved  her  up  into  the  seat.    "Now  strip!" 
I  shouted  to  the  curate.     "Yes,"  says  he, 
"I'll  strip,"  and  strip  he  did.    "Inside!"  says  I; 
They  stumbled  headlong  in,  I  cracked  my  whip 
[142] 


THE  ASHMAN 

And,  whoop!  the  Mail  went  rumbling  on  to  Hull! 

Well,  just  at  dawn  we  passed  the  Southern  Gate; 

We  galloped  down  the  street  and  made  a  halt 

Beside  the  Close.    "Here's  the  Cathedral,  dame!" 

Says  I,  and  helped  the  lady  to  the  ground. 

"Unbar  the  door,  and  help  his  Lordship  out 

And  don't  forget  the  curate!"    How  I  laughed 

To  see  the  Bishop  and  the  curate  run 

Stark  naked,  screaming,  to  the  Chapter  House! 

Well,  I  was  off  at  once  and  out  of  Hull 

And  never  stopped  to  breathe  the  nags  till  now. 

LITTLE  GIRL 

But,  Captain  Thunder!    Captain!    Are  you  mad? 
They'll  have  the  country  after  you!    Be  quick! 
You  can't  make  cover  in  a  coach  and  four 

As  on  a  horse !  A 

ASHMAN 

Nay,  Kate,  rest  easy  now. 

Red  Will  is  out,  and  Davy  Doublesword, 

And  Hieland  Jock,  and  Dan  the  Drum  and  Ned, 

And  twenty  gallant  gentlemen  beside. 

And  they  have  sworn  to  keep  the  roadway  clear 

By  setting  all  the  lobsters  such  a  chase 

Will  scatter  them  till  night.    And  Ned  will  blow 

His  bugle  when  the  way  is  safe.    Then,  whoop ! 

I'll  rattle  off  again  and  fill  the  coach 

[143] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

With  gentlemen  of  fortune,  comrades  true, 
And  own  the  road  from  here  to  London  town. 

(A  horn  is  heard  and  a  cry  of  "Fish,  fish,  fish, 
fine  fresh  fish!") 

LITTLE  GIRL 
Down,  Captain,  loose  the  horses!    There's  the  call! 

(The  ASHMAN  gets  down,  takes  off  the  horse's 
nosebag  and  unhitches  the  horse  from  the  post. ) 

ASHMAN  (getting  back  on  his  seat) 
Now,  Kate,  we'll  gallop  off  to  Arcady. 

POLICEMAN  (suddenly  entering) 
Hello  there,  Ashes,  who  you  talking  to? 

ASHMAN 
Kate  of  the  Greenwood. 

POLICEMAN 

Kate  ?    You  poor  old  boob ! 
You're  crazy  in  the  head.    There's  no  one  there! 

ASHMAN  (driving  off] 
Make  way  there,  constable.     (Cracks  his  whip  and 

sings.) 
Come  all  ye  jolly  rovers 

As  wants  to  hear  a  tale 
Will  make  your  hearts  as  merry 

As  a  bellyful  of  ale. 
[144] 


THE  ASHMAN 

I'll  sing  of  Captain  Thunder, 

And  his  dashing  slashing  way, 
How  he  kissed  the  queen  and  he  cuffed  the 

king, 
And  threw  the  crown  away! 

(Exit} 
POLICEMAN 
Well,  I'll  be  damned! 


[145] 


THE  BEAR  THAT  WALKS  LIKE 
A  MAN 

IT  would  be  a  relief  to  meet  a  man  who  would  tell 
honestly  why  he  likes  Artzibashev  and  some  of 
the  rest  of  the  modern  Russian  realists.  It  would 
be  a  relief  to  have  some  young  radical  say:  "Yes, 
I  know  Chekhov  is  dull  and  prolix,  but  then  the 
atmosphere  of  his  work  is  delightfully  unwhole 
some,  and  every  now  and  then  there  is  something 
pleasantly  morbid,  like  the  man  with  phosphorous 
poisoning  in  'The  Steppe,'  and  his  agreeable  cus 
tom  of  eating  live  fish.  And  then  there's  dear 
Michael  Artzibashev.  Of  course  his  style  is  no  bet 
ter  than  that  of  Laura  Jean  Libbey,  and  his  plots 
are  cheap  melodrama,  but  you  can't  deny  that  he 
is  consistently  nasty.  And  I  do  like  to  read  about 
sexual  depravity." 

But  the  young  radical  of  this  sort  is  hard  to  meet. 
Instead  we  find  the  lofty-foreheaded  young  man 
who  praises  Artzibashev's  psychological  insight, 
Gorky's  sympathy  with  humanity,  and — actually! 
— Chekhov's  humor!  Of  course  he  does  not  mean 
what  he  says.  He  likes  "Sanine"  for  the  same 
[146] 


THE  BEAR  LIKE  A  MAN 

reason  that  he  likes  "Three  Weeks."  But  he  would 
not  dare  to  confess  a  liking  for  "Three  Weeks"  be 
cause  that  book  is  English  trash.  And  "Sanine"  is 
Russian  trash.  And  from  the  point  of  view  of  in 
tellectual  snobbery,  there's  all  the  difference  in  the 
world  between  these  two  sorts  of  trash. 

Now,  it  would  of  course  be  absurd  to  condemn 
all  modern  Russian  fiction,  or  to  characterize  all 
admirers  of  contemporary  Russian  novelists  as 
hypocrites  and  sensualists.  Americans  and  Eng 
lishmen  who  know  almost  by  heart  the  great 
poems  and  stories  of  Pushkin,  who  know  Lermon- 
tov  as  they  know  Byron,  and  Gogol  as  they  know 
Dickens,  who  were  brought  up  on  the  novels  of 
Turgenieff,  have  every  right  in  the  world  to  seek 
for  new  delight  among  the  outpourings  of  the 
presses  of  Petrograd  and  Moscow.  But  the  sort 
of  person  who  is  feverishly  enthusiastic  over  Gorky 
and  Artzibashev  has  discovered  Russian  literature, 
in  all  probability,  during  the  few  years  which  have 
passed  since  his  graduation  from  Harvard.  His 
most  serious  offense  is  not  that  he  prefers  that 
which  is  evil  to  that  which  is  good,  and  praises  un 
true  and  inartistic  work  because  the  worst  part  of 
his  nature  responds  to  its  salacious  appeal.  His 
most  serious  offense  is  that  he  thinks  that  the  Hall 

[147] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

Caines  and  Marie  Corellis  of  Russia  really  are  rep 
resentative  writers,  and  that  he  insults  a  race  of 
great  romanticists  and  great  realists  by  calling 
works  that  are  thoroughly  morbid  and  vile  "very 
Russian." 

What  is  the  remedy  for  this  unfortunate  condi 
tion?  The  ideal  course  to  pursue  would  be,  of 
course,  to  spank  the  serious-minded  young  men  who 
think  that  the  Russian  novel  is  a  cross  between 
Nijinsky's  dancing  and  a  pogrom.  They  should  be 
sentenced  to  a  year  in  solitary  confinement,  during 
which  they  should  be  obliged  to  read  daily  a  very 
thoroughly  expurgated  edition  of  all  Artzibashev's 
works.  This  would  convince  them  that  it  was  not 
Artzibashev's  "power  of  psychological  analysis" 
that  attracted  them,  and  they  would  return  to  the 
world  sadder  and  more  honest  men. 

But  this  most  desirable  course  has  not  the  virtue 
of  practicality.  Perhaps  some  of  the  more  or  less 
recent  activities  of  American  publishers  will  so  edu 
cate  the  public  that  they  will  no  longer  be  impressed 
by  critics  whose  acquaintance  with  Russian  liter 
ature  is  confined  to  "Sanine"  and  some  of  Gorky's 
plays.  Not  long  ago  was  published  Stephen  Gra 
ham's  admirable  translation  of  "Gogol's  "Dead 
Souls,"  a  novel  which  in  its  rich  humor  and  sympa- 
[148] 


THE  BEAR  LIKE  A  MAN 

thetic  realism  suggests  "Pickwick  Papers,"  while 
its  whimsical  romanticism  brings  to  mind  some 
parts  of  "Don  Quixote."  It  is  one  of  the  world's 
classics;  no  one  who  has  not  read  it  has  a  right  to 
an  opinion  on  Russian  literature.  About  the  same 
time  appeared  Tolstoy's  "The  Death  of  Ivan 
Ilyitch,"  a  book  of  short  stories  by  the  great  novel 
ist,  half  genius  and  half  mountebank,  who  wasted 
his  genuine  talent  in  developing  a  new  religion, 
which  is  merely  a  grotesque  parody  of  Christianity. 
The  stories  in  this  book  are  compelling,  in  spite  of 
their  somewhat  mad  philosophy,  for  they  faithfully 
reflect  Russian  manners  and  certain  picturesque 
phases  of  Russian  idealism.  Another  volume  is 
sued  at  about  this  period  is  Maurice  Baring's  "Rus 
sian  Literature,"  the  best  one-volume  work  on  the 
subject  in  existence.  And  it  is  to  be  hoped  that 
other  publishers  will  publish  those  Russian  novels 
which  really  belong  to  literature,  rather  than  those 
which  are  of  interest  chiefly  to  the  pathologist  and 
alienist. 

But  meanwhile  the  market  is  flooded  with  vi 
ciously  sensational  works  which  are  tolerated  only 
because  their  exotic  quality  gives  them  a  certain 
distinction  in  the  eyes  of  the  provincial.  Here,  for 
example,  is  Maxim  Gorky's  "Submerged."  Mr. 

[149] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

Jerome's  "The  Passing  of  the  Third  Floor  Back," 
and  Charles  Rand  Kennedy's  "The  Servant  in  the 
House"  were  sentimental,  but  on  the  whole,  ef 
fective  treatments  of  a  very  dangerous  theme:  that 
of  the  miraculous  reformation  of  certain  phases  of 
modern  society  or  groups  of  individuals  through 
the  appearance  on  earth  of  a  man  possessing  Divine 
attributes.  Gorky's  plan  has  a  similar  plot,  but, 
of  course,  he  differs  from  the  two  English  writers 
in  making  vice  triumph  in  the  end.  The  poor 
wretches  who  have  endeavored  to  regain  a  little  of 
their  lost  decency  are  thrust  back  into  the  slime. 
The  people  who  make  up  this  typical  Gorky  offer 
ing  are  drunkards,  thieves,  depraved  creatures  of 
every  kind.  They  are  utterly  lost  and  the  author 
seems  to  gloat  over  their  depravity  and  misery. 
But  then  what  else  is  he  to  do?  He  must  live  up 
to  his  name.  Gorky,  you  know,  is  a  pen  name 
meaning  "bitter,"  and  Alexei  Maximovitch  Pyesh- 
kov  feels  that  he  must  justify  the  title  he  has  so 
proudly  assumed.  But  ridiculous  affectation  it  is! 
It  is  as  if  Matthew  Arnold  had  called  himself 
"Matthew  Sweetness  and  Light." 

And  there  is  a  translation  of  Leonidas  Andreiev, 
"The  Red  Laugh."  This  was  an  attempt  to  flash 
upon  the  astonished  world  the  novel  idea  that  war 
[150] 


THE  BEAR  LIKE  A  MAN 

is  a  very,  very  unpleasant  thing.  Mr.  Andreiev 
spills  gore  on  every  page,  and  the  publisher  assists 
him  by  making  the  title  of  the  book  blood  red  on  a 
black  ground.  All  the  characters  in  the  book  go 
mad,  and  the  author's  utter  inaptitude  for  literature 
turns  what  might  have  been  passable  third-rate 
melodrama  into  a  farce.  As  a  contribution  to  let 
ters,  and  as  a  piece  of  pacifist  propaganda  "The 
Red  Laugh"  is  inferior  to  "I  Didn't  Raise  My  Boy 
to  Be  a  Soldier." 

And  then  there  is  Artzibashev :  so  much  boomed 
and  press-agented ;  praised  by  the  radical  magazines 
for  his  "assault  on  ordinary  morality"  and  his  "des 
perately  poignant  artistry";  long-haired  young 
men  with  large  eyes  have  told  the  women's  clubs  all 
about  him.  Well,  of  course,  "desperately  poignant 
artistry"  means  nothing  at  all,  and  "artistry"  is 
meaningless  when  used  in  connection  with  a  man 
like  the  author  of  "The  Millionaire."  He  doesn't 
write  novels,  he  merely  throws  something  evil- 
smelling  into  the  reader's  face. 

If  the  scene  of  "The  Millionaire"  and  "Nina" 
were  laid  in  the  United  States,  these  stories  would 
never  have  been  printed.  They  are  without  literary 
merit;  they  are  the  crudest  melodrama,  but  their 
grossness  makes  them  appeal  to  the  prurient,  and 

[151] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

their  foreign  origin  charms  the  literary  snob.  To 
say  that  they  reflect  Russian  life  is  to  insult  Russia 
grievously.  They  do  reflect,  it  is  true,  the  basest 
part  of  Russian  life,  the  part  which  no  friend  of 
Russia  or  of  literature  can  wish  reflected.  They  re 
flect  the  gross  and  hideous  bestiality  of  the  Russian 
criminal  class,  they  reflect  the  life  of  people  who 
have  added  to  their  native  savagery  the  vices  of 
civilization.  They  call  to  mind  a  picture  of  the 
Russian  people  as  something  at  once  bestial  and 
human,  a  monstrosity,  a  nightmare:  perhaps  the 
thing  that  Kipling  had  in  mind  when  he  wrote  of 
the  bear  that  walks  like  a  man. 


[152] 


ABSINTHE  AT  THE  CHESHIRE 
CHEESE 

BELONGING  rather  to  gossip  than  to  literary 
history,  the  following  anecdote  is  nevertheless 
significant  when  considered  merely  as  an  illustra 
tive  legend.  A  certain  London  publisher,  it  is  said, 
recently  had  in  his  possession  a  notebook  that  had 
been  found,  after  his  death,  among  the  effects  of 
Lionel  Johnson.  The  poet  had  scribbled  in  it 
memoranda  of  all  sorts:  notes  for  essays,  stray  epi 
grams,  rough  drafts  of  poems.  He  had  also  copied 
into  it,  from  books  and  magazines,  bits  of  prose 
and  verse  that  gave  him  pleasure.  Well,  one  day 
this  friend  said  to  Johnson's  loyal  friend,  Miss 
Louise  Imogen  Guiney — and,  by  the  way,  Miss 
Guiney  is  not  my  authority  for  this  story — "Do  you 
know,  I  have  found  in  this  notebook  an  unpublished 
poem  by  Lionel  Johnson!  It  is  very  beautiful,  far 
better  than  any  of  Johnson's  published  poems.  I'll 
read  it  to  you."  Thereupon  he  opened  the  notebook 
and  began  to  declaim : 

[153] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

Last  night,  ah,  yesternight,  between  her  lips  and 

mine 
There  fell  thy  shadow,  Cynara! 

Of  course  Lionel  Johnson,  like  every  other  lover 
of  good  poetry,  had  felt  the  charm  of  Ernest  Dow- 
son's  now  famous  poem  which  is  headed  by  the 
phrase,  "Non  Sum  Qualis  Eram  Bonse  Sub  Regno 
Cynarse,"  and  had  hastily  copied  it  in  his  notebook, 
perhaps  from  Dowson's  manuscript  at  some  meet 
ing  of  the  Rhymers'  Club.  The  point  of  this  story 
is  that  the  publisher,  knowing  Johnson  chiefly  as 
a  celebrant  of  the  Catholic  faith,  attributed  to  him 
not  one  of  Dowson's  poems  about  nuns,  or  Extreme 
Unction,  or  the  Blessed  Sacrament,  but  a  lyric 
which  at  least  in  tradition  and  phrasing  is  obviously 
pagan. 

Out  of  the  mouths  of  babes  and  publishers!  That 
wise  and  sympathetic  critic,  Miss  Katherine  Bregy, 
has  justly  praised  the  lovely  poetry  which  resulted 
from  Ernest  Dowson's  return  to  the  faith  of  his 
ancestors.  She  has  demonstrated,  for  all  time,  the 
genuineness  of  his  Catholicism,  and  made  Mr.  Vic 
tor  Plarr's  recent  sneer  at  his  dead  friend's  conver 
sion  seem  the  most  futile  thing  in  his  entertaining 
but  ineffective  book.  It  would  be  absurd  for  me 
[154] 


ABSINTHE  AT  CHESHIRE  CHEESE 

to  attempt  to  add  to  Miss  Bregy's  interpretative 
appreciations  of  the  "sculptural  beauty"  of  Dow- 
son's  religious  poems.  But,  like  the  simple-minded 
publisher  previously  mentioned,  I  find  indications, 
if  not  of  piety,  at  least  of  normality,  sanity,  whole- 
someness,  virtue,  in  nearly  every  poem  which  this 
so-called  "decadent"  wrote. 

There  are,  and  there  have  always  been  since  sin 
first  came  into  the  world,  genuine  "decadents."  That 
is,  there  have  been  writers  who  have  devoted  all 
their  energies  and  talents  to  the  cause  of  evil,  who 
have  consistently  and  sincerely  opposed  Christian 
morality,  and  zealously  endeavored  to  make  the 
worse  appear  the  better  cause.  But  every  poet 
who  lays  a  lyric  wreath  at  a  heathen  shrine,  who 
sings  the  delights  of  immorality,  or  hashish,  or  sui 
cide,  or  mayhem,  is  not  a  decadent :  often  he  is  mere 
ly  weak-minded.  The  true  decadent,  to  paraphrase 
a  famous  saying,  wears  his  vices  lightly,  like  a 
flower.  He  really  succeeds  in  making  vice  seem 
picturesque  and  amusing  and  even  attractive. 

Now,  this  is  exactly  what  Ernest  Dowson  never 
could  do.  He  was  a  member,  it  will  be  remem 
bered,  of  that  little  band  of  "esthetic"  poets  which 
was  called  the  Rhymers'  Club.  With  them  he  spent 
certain  evenings  at  the  Cheshire  Cheese  and  there 

[155] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

he  drank  absinthe.  This  is  a  significant  and  sym 
bolic  fact.  Xot  in  some  ominous  Parisian  cellar, 
but  beneath  the  beamed  ceiling  of  a  most  British 
inn,  still  stained  with  smoke  from  the  pipe  of  Dr. 
Samuel  Johnson,  among  thick  mutton  chops  and 
tankards  of  musty  ale,  in  a  cloud  of  sweet-scented 
steam  that  rose  from  the  parted  crust  of  the  mag 
nificent  pigeon-pie,  Ernest  Dowson  drank  absinthe. 

Of  course  it  is  true — more's  the  pity! — that  in  the 
melancholy  years  just  before  his  death  he  drank 
absinthe  in  places  where  it  is  terribly  fitting  to  drink 
absinthe.  But  this  does  not  destroy  the  splendid 
symbolism  of  his  act  of  drinking  absinthe  in  the 
Cheshire  Cheese.  The  wickedness  in  his  poems  and 
in  his  prose-sketches  are  always  as  affected  and  in 
congruous  as  is  that  pallid  medicine  in  any  honest 
tavern. 

He  tried  hard  to  be  pagan.  In  the  manner  of 
Mr.  Swinburne,  he  exclaimed:  "Goddess  the 
laughter-loving,  Aphrodite,  befriend !  Let  me  have 
peace  of  thee,  truce  of  thee,  golden  one,  send!"  And 
not  even  Mr.  Swinburne  ever  wrote  lines  so  ab 
solutely  unconvincing.  He  said,  "I  go  where  the 
wind  blows,  Chloe,  and  am  not  sorry  at  all."  And 
from  this  lyric  no  one  can  fail  to  get  the  impression 
that  the  poet  was  very  sorry  indeed.  He  imitated, 
[156] 


ABSINTHE  AT  CHESHIRE  CHEESE 

even  less  successfully  than  Oscar  Wilde,  the  un 
pleasant  prose  poems  of  Baudelaire,  and  he  made 
the  very  worst  of  all  English  versions  of  Paul  Ver- 
laine's  "Colloque  Sentimental." 

When  Dowson  took  hashish  during  his  student 
days,  Mr.  Arthur  Symons  tells  us,  it  was  before  a 
large  and  festive  company  of  friends.  I  do  not 
think  that  he  convinced  them  that  he  was  that  sup 
posedly  romantic  character,  an  habitual  user  of  the 
drug.  The  hashish,  so  to  speak,  in  his  poems  is 
similarly  incongruous  and  unconvincing.  He  was 
an  accomplished  artist  in  words,  a  delicate,  sensitive 
and  graceful  genius,  but  he  was  no  more  fitted  to 
be  a  pagan  than  to  be  a  policeman.  And  so,  in 
his  best-known  poem,  he  uses  all  the  pagan  proper 
ties,  all  the  splendors  of  sin's  pageantry,  but  his 
theme,  his  over-mastering  thought — very  different 
from  the  over-mastering  thought  of,  say,  Mr. 
Arthur  Symons  in  similar  circumstances — is  a  soul- 
shaking  lament  for  his  stained  faithfulness,  for  his 
treason  to  the  Catholic  ideal  of  chastity. 

He  could  not  write  poems  that  really  were 
pagan.  He  was  not  a  true  decadent.  And  for  this 
undoubtedly  he  now  is  thanking  God.  He  had  his 
foolish  hours:  he  sometimes  misused  his  gift  of  song. 
But — and  this  is  the  important  thing  about  it — he 

[157] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

did  not  know  how  to  misuse  it  successfully.  The 
real  Ernest  Dowson  was  not  the  picturesque  vaga 
bond  about  whom  Mr.  Arthur  Symons  and  Mr. 
Victor  Plarr  have  written,  but  the  man  who  with 
all  his  heart  praised  "meekness  and  vigilance  and 
chastity,"  who  "was  faithful"  in  his  pathetic,  inef 
fective  fashion,  but  who  knew  at  least  the  fidelity  of 
his  eternal  Mother,  who,  in  Miss  Bregy's  beautiful 
words,  "laid  his  broken  body  in  consecrated  ground 
and  followed  this  bruised  soul  with  her  pitiful, 
asperging  prayers." 


[158] 


JAPANESE  LACQUER 

WHAT  was  the  matter  with  Laf cadio  Hearn ? 
No  American  has  written  prose  more  deli 
cate  and  vividly  beautiful  than  his,  nor  has  any 
one  else — not  even  Yone  Noguchi — put  into  Eng 
lish  so  clear  a  revelation  of  Japan's  soul.  Yet  after 
an  hour  with  "Kwaidan"  or  "Glimpses  of  Unfamil 
iar  Japan"  the  normal  reader  is  wearied  and,  in 
stead  of  being  grateful  to  the  erudite  and  skillful 
author,  regards  him  with  actual  dislike. 

Why  is  this?  Is  it  because  Hearn  had  a  mor 
bid  fondness  for  the  tragic,  and  loved  to  dwell  on 
mental,  physical  and  spiritual  disease?  This  is 
partly  the  reason,  yet  De  Quincey  and  Edgar  Allan 
Poe  inspire  no  such  aversion.  Is  it  because  Hearn's 
style  is  too  rich,  exquisite  and  precious?  Walter 
Pater  had  the  same  fault,  but  Walter  Pater  is  read 
with  delight  by  Hearn's  enemies.  Is  it  because  of 
Hearn's  ridiculous  religious  prejudices — his  hatred 
for  the  Jesuits,  for  example?  No,  Hearn's  hatred 
for  the  Jesuits  is  simply  a  bad  little  boy's  impu 
dence  toward  his  schoolmaster.  He  had  none  of 

[159] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

George  Sorrow's  fiery,  romantic  passion  against 
the  "Man  in  Black."  And  Borrow's  "Lavengro" 
and  "Romany  Rye"  were  loved  even  by  so  un- 
Protestant  a  writer  as  Lionel  Johnson. 

No,  the  reason  lies  deeper,  and  is  simpler,  than 
any  of  these.  Hearn  failed,  not  because  he  was 
precious,  not  because  he  was  morbid,  not  because  he 
was  prejudiced,  but  because  he  had  no  imagina 
tion. 

Lafcadio  Hearn  was,  in  the  worst  sense  of  the 
word,  a  realist.  He  had  thoroughly  the  material 
istic  attitude  toward  life ;  he  could  see  only  the  dull 
outside  of  things,  not  the  indwelling  splendor.  An 
imaginative  man  would  have  delighted  in  his  mixed 
Greek  and  Irish  blood,  would  have  realized  that  as 
a  newspaperman  *he  was  a  member  of  the  most  ro 
mantic  profession  the  world  has  known,  would 
have  seen  that  New  Orleans  was  no  mean  city.  But 
Hearn  was  so  prosaic  and  matter-of-fact  that  he 
saw  only  the  forms  and  outlines  of  the  things  about 

him,  and  so  sentimentally  credulous  that  he  believed 

• 

that  Japan  contained  greater  wonders  than  Louis 
iana.  Dr.  George  M.  Gould,  in  his  interesting  but 
unpleasant  work,  "Concerning  Lafcadio  Hearn," 
blames  many  of  his  dead  friend's  faults  on  his  de- 
[160] 


JAPANESE  LACQUER 

fective  vision.  But  Hearn' s  myopia  was  spiritual 
as  well  as  physical:  he  could  not  see  the  soul. 

What  terrible  results  came  from  this  spiritual 
myopia!  Of  course,  its  worst  result  was  the  un 
speakable  tragedy  of  Hearn's  rejection  of  Chris 
tianity  for  that  cruel  burlesque  on  religion  called 
Buddhism.  But  the  minor  results  were  many  and 
dreadful  .  .  .  chief  among  them  was  the  loss  to  the 
world  of  a  great  writer. 

Lafcadio  Hearn  might  have  been  a  great  writer. 
If  proof  of  this  were  needed,  it  would  be  found  in 
a  posthumously  published  book  of  singular  inter 
est — "Fantastics  and  Other  Fancies."  This  is  a 
collection  of  Hearn's  earliest  writings,  resurrected 
from  the  brittle  yellow  pages  of  old  New  Orleans 
newspapers  by  Charles  Woodward  Hutson. 

The  brief  essays  in  this  book  are  as  charmingly 
phrased  as  anything  this  master  of  charming 
phrases  ever  wrote,  and  they  are — unlike  his  later 
work — imaginative.  That  is,  they  are  interpreta 
tions  and  idealizations  of  the  things  naturally  fa 
miliar  to  Hearn.  He  had  not  yet  committed  the 
artistic  heresy  of  confusing  strangeness  with 
beauty.  He  was  not  yet  deluded  into  the  belief 
that  romance  belongs  exclusively  to  Nippon.  He 

[161] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

still  was  loyal  to  the  traditions  of  his  own  civiliza 
tion. 

The  literary  value  of  Hearn's  work  is  not  to  be 
questioned.  No  living  writer  (not  even  Algernon 
Blackwood)  has  so  great  and  fiery  an  imagination 
as  had  this  quondam  reporter  of  the  New  Orleans 
Daily  Item;  no  living  writer  (except  Alice  Mey- 
nell)  understands  so  thoroughly  the  art  of  putting 
together  a  few  hundred  words  so  as  to  form  a  struc 
ture  of  enduring  loveliness. 

It  was  in  1878  that  Lafcadio  Hearn,  half  starved 
and  dressed  in  rags,  persuaded  Colonel  John  W. 
Fairfax,  owner  of  the  New  Orleans  Item,  to  give 
him  work.  He  was  called  "assistant  editor,"  but 
it  may  be  supposed  that  the  "assistant  editor"  of 
this  little  two-page  paper  did  most  of  the  repor- 
torial  work.  What  treasures  of  glowing  narrative 
its  news  columns  may  hold  can  only  be  conjectured. 
But  on  its  editorial  page  appeared  from  time  to 
time  for  several  years  brief  sketches,  some  whimsi 
cal,  some  sombre,  all  highly  imaginative  and  beauti 
fully  phrased.  These,  with  other  writings  which 
Hearn  contributed  later  to  the  New  Orleans 
Times-Democrat^  Dr.  Hutson  has  searched  out  and 
brought  together  in  this  volume  of  real  charm  and 
value. 
[162] 


JAPANESE  LACQUER 

Any  trivial  incident  of  his  daily  round,  any 
quaint  bit  of  history  or  legend  that  he  came  upon 
in  his  amazingly  extensive  reading,  would  furnish 
this  strangest  of  newspaper  men  with  a  theme.  He 
saw  in  some  antique  shop  a  faun  and  dryad  pictured 
in  enamel  on  a  little  golden  case,  and,  sitting  at  his 
littered,  ink-stained  desk  in  his  noisy  office,  he  wrote 
the  exquisite  "Idyl  of  a  French  Snuffbox."  Rid 
ing  to  work  in  a  clanging  street  car,  he  found  on 
its  floor  a  Japanese  fan  of  paper,  and  wrote  of  its 
unknown  owner  with  a  gay  fervor  surprising  in 
such  an  amateur  of  grief.  Mark  Twain  came  to 
New  Orleans,  and  the  result  was  that  masterpiece 
of  vivid  and  sympathetic  description,  "A  River 
Reverie." 

He  was  not  always  absolutely  original,  this  ob 
scure  hack  whose  genius  was  one  day  to  surprise 
and  delight  the  world.  Subconsciously,  he  remem 
bered  his  spiritual  brother,  Edgar  Allan  Poe,  when 
he  wrote  those  tales  of  the  grotesque  and  arabesque, 
"The  Black  Cupid"  and  "The  One  Pill  Box." 
Also  there  are  echoes  of  Coleridge,  and  of  those 
Parnassian  Frenchmen  whose  methods  and  ideals 
Hearn  always  shared. 

But  no  Frenchman  of  his  time  could  match  the 
tender  humor  of  "The  Post  Office,"  nor  were  Poe 

[163] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

and  Coleridge  standing  at  his  elbow  when  he  wrote 
"Hiouen-Thrang."  These  were  written  by  Laf- 
cadio  Hearn  himself,  by  that  strange  nomad  who 
called  no  one  race  his  own,  who  looked  at  life  with 
huge  and  perilous  curiosity,  who  gave  to  most  un- 
English  .thoughts  a  splendidly  English  dress,  who 
just  missed  being  a  poet,  who  just  missed  being  a 
mystic,  who  just  missed  being  happy. 

Already,  the  "Fantastics"  show,  Hearn  was 
hearing  the  Orient's  alluring  voice.  New  Orleans, 
that  brave  old  bright-colored  Latin  city,  struggling 
with  the  aftermath  of  war  and  pestilence,  was  just 
the  place  for  a  man  of  his  exotic  tastes.  "I  cannot 
say  how  fair  and  rich  and  beautiful  this  dead  South 
is,"  he  wrote.  "It  has  fascinated  me."  But  not 
the  venerable  splendors  of  New  Orleans,  not  the  pic 
turesque  shores  of  Grand  Isle,  could  take  the  place 
of  the  radiant  East,  to  which  he  continually  re 
ferred,  of  which  clairvoyantly  he  seemed  to  know 
himself  already  a  citizen. 

There  are  sketches  in  this  extraordinary  little 
book,  notably  "Les  Coulisses"  and  "The  Undying 
One,"  which  remind  the  reader,  strangely  enough, 
of  certain  prose  fancies  of  another  son  of  Ushaw, 
Francis  Thompson.  A  healthier  Lafcadio  Hearn, 
with  a  broader  vision  and  a  tradition  more  clearly 
[164] 


JAPANESE  LACQUER 

English,  might  have  written  "Finis  Coronat  Opus." 
And  the  thought  makes  one,  perhaps,  a  little  re 
gretful  that  Hearn  was  so  sincerely  a  gypsy,  that 
he  was  drawn  away  from  the  scenes  of  his  young 
manhood  to  a  lovely  but  wholly  alien  land.  Of 
course,  he  wrote  beautifully  of  Japan.  But  these 
youthful  sketches  show  that  Japan  was  not  neces 
sary  to  his  artistic  expression.  And  to  take  on  that 
strange  new  culture  he  had  to  give  up  some  herit 
ages  of  thought  and  belief  that  he  could  ill  spare,  the 
loss  of  which,  it  may  be,  is  the  cause  of  that  melan 
choly,  shading  sometimes  into  despair,  which  per 
meates  even  his  richest  and  most  sympathetic 
Japanese  studies. 

Hearn  did  not  ruin  himself  as  a  writer  by  writing 
about  Japan.  He  ruined  himself  by  trying  to  be 
a  Japanese.  N'ow,  one  can  write  about  Japan  with 
out  being  a  Japanese,  just  as  one  can  write  about 
hell  without  being  damned.  But  Hearn  was  not 
sufficiently  imaginative  to  perceive  this. 

So  he  gave  up  European  civilization  for  that  of 
Japan.  His  Irish  father's  faith  held  all  that  was 
noble  of  his  Greek  mother's  pagan  tradition,  but 
Hearn  chose  the  novelties  of  Buddhism.  He  went 
to  Japan:  he  devoted  the  gifts  that  God  had  given 
him,  and  the  technical  skill  that  the  Jesuits  had 

[165] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

taught  him,  to  the  celebration  of  anti-Christian 
legends  and  ceremonials.  But  cherry-blossoms 
bloom  only  for  a  season — unlike  Sharon's  rose. 
And  the  tragic  letters  published  after  Hearn's 
death  show  that  this  fantastic  adventurer  learned 
at  last  that  he  had  forsaken  the  splendid  adventure 
first  appointed  for  him.  His  bitter  revilings  of  the 
people  and  customs  of  the  land  he  had  spent  years 
in  praising  show  that  within  Nippon's  golden 
apples,  too,  are  ashes. 

Hearn  has  been  held  up  by  the  sentimentalists 
as  a  shining  example  of  humanity's  cruelty  to  great 
artists.  He  is  instead  a  shining  example  of  the 
minor  artist's  cruelty  to  humanity.  He  was  not 
rejected  of  men.  His  was  not  "divine  discontent," 
his  was  the  pernicious  "desire  for  new  things." 
Therefore  he  became  merely  the  maker  of  fair  and 
futile  decorations,  and  he  who  might  have  been  a 
ipoet,  a  creator,  became  a  clever  wordsmith. 

The  essays  in  this  little  book  of  Hearn's  earliest 
work  show  a  strange  resemblance  to  the  prose  of 
Francis  Thompson.  What  a  contrast  the  lives  of 
the  two  men  present!  Both  were  vagabonds,  both 
were  physically  handicapped.  But  Francis 
Thompson  was  imaginative  enough  to  be  himself, 
so  he  wrote  "The  Hound  of  Heaven."  And  Laf- 
[166] 


JAPANESE  LACQUER 

cadio  Hearn  was  so  lacking  in  imagination  as  to 
want  to  be  somebody  else — so  he  wrote  "Gleanings 
in  Buddha  Fields." 

It  is  not  for  a  mere  journalist  to  point  out  the 
moral  significance  of  the  tragedy  of  Lafcadio 
Hearn.  But  I  venture  to  suggest  that  the  young 
American  and  English  poets  who  are  kissing  the 
silken  hem  of  Mr.  Rabindranath  Tagore's  garment 
might  profitably  read  Lafcadio  Hearn's  later  cor 
respondence.  Fame  and  happiness  are  not  always 
the  reward  of  him  who  gives  up  the  Occident  for 
the  Orient.  Orientalism  has  its  own  truths,  its 
own  splendors.  But  the  writers  whose  words  we 
cherish,  whose  names  are  graven  on  our  hearts,  the 
makers  of  our  literature,  did  anyone  of  these  sell 
his  birthright  for  a  mess  of — rice? 


[167] 


SAPPHO  REDIVIVA 

OUT  of  the  dust  of  Egypt  comes  the  voice  of 
Sappho,  as  clear  and  sweet  as  when  she  sang 
in  Lesbos  by  the  sea,  600  years  before  the  birth  of 
Christ.  The  picks  and  spades  of  Arab  workmen, 
directed  by  Bernard  P.  Grenfell  and  Arthur  S. 
Hunt  of  the  Egypt  Exploration  Fund,  have  given 
the  world  a  hitherto  unknown  poem  by  the  greatest 
woman  poet  of  all  time. 

Of  course  it  is  not  a  complete  and  legible  manu 
script,  this  buried  treasure  unearthed  at  sunburnt 
Oxyrhyncus.  It  is  a  little  pile  of  fragments  of 
papyrus,  fifty-six  in  all.  And  on  one  of  them  is 
the  tantalizing  inscription,  "The  First  Book  of  the 
Lyrics  of  Sappho,  1,332  lines." 

To  piece  these  fragments  together  has  been  a  task 
more  delicate  and  arduous  than  to  dig  them  out  of 
the  earth.  Messrs.  Grenfell  and  Hunt  succeeded 
in  combining  some  twenty  shreds  of  papyrus,  and 
thus  in  showing  the  nature  of  the  original  manu 
script.  And  the  chief  product  of  their  labor  and 
skill  was  a  poem  of  six  stanzas  in  the  form  to  which 
£168] 


SAPPHO  REDIVIVA 

Sappho's  name  is  given,  a  poem,  however,  from 
which  two  entire  lines  and  many  words  were 
missing. 

Then  it  was  that  J.  M.  Edmonds,  an  eminent 
Hellenist  of  Cambridge  University,  gave  his  atten 
tion  to  the  matter.  He  studied  the  possible  rela 
tionship  of  the  words,  parsing  and  analyzing  as 
diligently  as  any  youth  whom  only  the  implacable 
Homer  separates  from  a  strip  of  parchment 
marked  with  the  university's  seal  and  his  own  name 
parodied  in  Latin. 

"Anactoria,"  he  saw,  was  vocative — and  that  was 
greatly  significant.  He  added  accents,  syllables, 
wrords,  and  finally  he  supplied — it  was  pure  guess 
work,  of  course — two  entire  lines.  And  the  result 
is  undoubtedly  a  close  approximation  of  the  origi 
nal  lyric,  more  nearly  complete,  indeed,  than  most 
of  the  poems  which  have  made  critics  call  Sappho 
"the  Tenth  Muse." 

For  Sappho  is  known  only  by  two  brief  odes 
and  a  few  lyric  fragments — "two  small  brilliants 
and  a  handful  of  star  dust,"  they  have  been  called. 
She  wrote,  it  is  believed,  at  least  nine  books  of  odes, 
together  with  epithalamia,  epigrams,  elegies,  and 
monodies. 

To  account  for  the  disappearance  of  all  this 

[169] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

poetry  several  theories  have  been  advanced.  One, 
which  is  largely  accepted,  is  that  Sappho's  poems 
were  burned  at  Byzantium  in  the  year  A.  D.  380  by 
command  of  Gregory  Nazianzen,  who  desired  that 
his  own  poems  might  be  studied  in  their  stead,  for 
the  improvement  of  the  morals  of  his  people. 

J.  M.  Edmonds  has  contributed  to  an  issue  of 
The  Classical  Review  his  amended  version  of  the 
poem.  He  gives  also  the  following  prose  trans 
lation  : 

The  fairest  thing  in  all  the  world  some  say  is  a 
host  of  horsemen,  and  some  a  host  of  foot,  and  some, 
again,  a  navy  of  ships;  but  to  me,  'tis  my  heart's 
beloved,  and  'tis  easy  to  make  this  understood  by 
any. 

When  Helen  surveyed  much  mortal  beauty,  she 
chose  for  the  best  the  destroyer  of  all  the  honor  of 
Troy,  and  thought  not  so  much  either  of  child  or 
parent  dear,  but  was  led  astray  by  love  to  bestow 
her  heart  afar;  for  woman  is  ever  easy  to  be  bent 
when  she  thinks  lightly  of  what  is  near  and  dear. 

Even  so  you  to-day,  my  Anactoria,  remember 
not,  it  seems,  when  she  is  with  you  one  of  whom 
I  would  rather  have  the  sweet  sound  of  her  footfall 
and  the  sight  of  the  brightness  of  her  beaming  face 
than  all  the  chariots  and  armored  footmen  of  Lydia. 

Know  that  in  this  world  man  cannot  have  the 
[170] 


SAPPHO  REDIVIVA 

best;  yet  to  pray  for  a  share  in  what  was  once 
shared  is  better  than  to  forget  it. 

I  have  roughly  rendered  the  poem  into  English 
verse  as  follows : 

Unto  some  a  troop  of  triumphant  horsemen, 
Or  a  radiant  fleet,  or  a  marching  legion, 
Is  the  fairest  sight — but  to  me  the  fairest 
Is  my  beloved. 

Every  lover  must  understand  my  wisdom, 

For   when   Helen   looked   on  the   whole   world's 

beauty 

What  she  chose  as  best  was  a  man,  her  loved  one, 
Who  shamed  Troy's  honor. 

Then  her  little  child  was  to  her  as  nothing. 
Not  her  mother's  tears  nor  her  father's  pleading 
Moved  her.    At  Love's  word,  meekly  she  surren 
dered 

Unto  this  stranger. 

So  does  woman  yield,  valuing  but  little 
Things,  however  fair,  that  she  looks  at  daily. 
So  you  now,  Anactoria,  forget  her, 
Her,  who  is  with  you, 

Her,  to  see  whose  face,  fairer  than  the  sunlight, 
Her,  to  hear  whose  step  ringing  on  the  threshold, 
I'd  forego  the  sight  of  the  Lydian  army, 
Bowmen  and  chariots. 

[171] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

Never  in  this  world  is  the  best  our  portion, 
Yet  there  is  a  vague  pleasure  in  remembrance, 
And  to  long  for  joy  that  has  passed  is  better 
Than  to  forget  it. 

No  one  would  venture  to  criticize  Mr.  Edmonds's 
treatment  of  the  Greek  text;  his  ingenious  ad 
ditions  are  a  distinguished,  scholarly  achievement. 
Nor  can  any  fault  be  found  with  his  prose  transla 
tion  of  the  poem.  But  to  readers  of  poetry  who 
have  not  that  peculiar  literal-mindedness  which 
characterizes  scholars  his  interpretation  of  the 
translated  poem,  his  explanation  of  Sappho's  mean 
ing,  is  anything  but  satisfactory. 

It  gives  "point"  to  the  piece,  he  says,  if  we  im 
agine  Anactoria  to  have  fallen  in  love  with  a  soldier. 
Sappho,  he  explains,  clearly  is  away  in  exile.  An 
actoria  and  the  other  woman  are  living  in  the  same 
town,  presumably  Mitylene.  He  gives  this  inter 
pretation  of  Sappho's  supposed  address  to  Anac 
toria: 

You,  who  are  lucky  enough  to  be  with  her  still, 
have  forgotten,  it  seems,  a  friend  whom  I  would 
give  anything  to  see  again.  For  you  have  fallen  in 
love.  And  yet  it  is  natural  enough;  and  I  cannot 
blame  you.  But  O,  that  I  might  have  the  joy  you 
are  throwing  away!  I  know  it  is  no  use  wishing; 
[172] 


SAPPHO  REDIVIVA 

but   still,   past    delights   are   better   missed  than 
forgotten. 

Now,  it  is  the  scholars  that  have  brought  the 
poets  into  disrepute.  They  insist  on  interpreting 
them  and  in  being  at  once  too  literal  and  too  imag 
inative.  Take,  for  instance,  the  obvious  example 
of  Shakespeare.  Plays  and  poems  written  for  the 
entertainment  of  the  world  have  been  twisted  and 
tortured  by  erudite  commentators  who  have  seen  in 
them  supernatural  prophecies,  scientific  treatises, 
political  tracts,  and — what  is  in  this  connection 
especially  important — personal  confessions.  Man 
kind  cannot  be  restrained,  it  seems,  from  the  at 
tempt  to  interpret  all  poetry  as  rhymed  autobi 
ography. 

Why,  it  is  respectfully  asked,  does  it  give  "point 
to  the  piece"  to  imagine  that  Anactoria  has  fallen 
in  love  with  a  soldier?  Why  drag  in  the  soldier? 
Surely  a  poet  may  mention  the  panoply  of  war 
without  having  in  mind  any  particular  fighting 
man.  The  poem  is  simple  and  direct;  it  may  be 
taken  at  its  face  value  without  the  addition  of  any 
love  affair  other  than  that  which  primarily  it 
celebrates. 

Mr.  Edmonds  is,  it  may  be  objected,  too  imagina- 

[173] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

tive  when  he  supplies  Anactoria  with  a  mysterious 
military  lover.  He  is  perhaps  too  literal  minded  in 
the  very  essence  of  his  interpretation.  Strangely 
enough,  he  seems  for  the  moment  to  forget  that  a 
poet  is  not  compelled  always  to  speak  in  propria 
persona. 

Why  should  we  believe  that  Sappho  meant  this 
poem  as  a  personal  message  to  a  friend  named  An 
actoria?  Why  is  it  not  possible — even  probable — 
that  Sappho  meant  the  poem  as  the  utterance  of 
someone  else,  of  someone  who  existed  only  in  her 
own  splendid  imagination? 

If  this  were  so  the  case  would  really  not  be  with 
out  precedent.  "My  mother  bore  me  in  the  south 
ern  wild;  And  I  am  black,  but  O,  my  soul  is  white," 
was  not  (as  scholars  of  A.  D.  2,000  may  gravely 
state)  the  outcry  of  a  little  colored  boy,  but  the 
work  of  an  elderly  English  gentleman.  Walter 
Savage  Landor's  "Mother,  I  Cannot  Mind  My 
Wheel,"  was  not  a  personal  expression — Mr.  Lan- 
dor,  as  his  mother  was  well  aware,  had  no  wheel 
to  mind.  Shelley  was  not  the  daughter  of  Earth 
and  Water  and  Browning  never  choked  a  young 
woman  named  Porphyria  with  her  own  hair. 

No,  in  spite  of  the  excellent  advice  that  has  been 
given  them,  poets  refuse  to  look  exclusively  into 
[174] 


SAPPHO  REDIVIVA 

their  own  hearts  and  write.  They  refuse  to  be  con 
sistently  subjective,  they  insist  on  voicing  the 
thoughts  of  others.  Therefore,  not  all  the  scholars 
in  Christendom  and  heathenry  need  keep  us  from 
regarding  Sappho's  newly  found  poem  as  any 
thing  but  what,  on  the  surface,  it  appears  to  be,  the 
address  of  a  rejected  lover  to  a  friend  or  sister  of 
his  lady. 

If  Mr.  Edmonds's  admirable  prose  translation 
be  regarded  in  this  light — which  surely  is  the  light 
of  nature — what  is  there  about  it  to  perplex  ?  That 
Sappho  used  the  name  "Anactoria"  in  other  poems 
does  not  prove  that  in  that  shadowy  school  on  Les 
bos  there  was  a  girl  so  named.  It  is  a  good  rhyth 
mical  name,  fitting  excellently  into  the  middle  of  a 
lesser  Sapphic  strophe;  why  should  not  Sappho  use 
it?  Was  Pompilia  among  Browning's  acquaint 
ances,  or  does  E.  A.  Robinson  write  letters  to  Flem 
ing  Helphenstine  and  Minniver  Cheevy? 

Even  if,  because  of  the  ode  which  Longinus 
praised  and  because  of  other  references,  we  believe 
that  Sappho  really  had  an  Anactoria  among  her 
friends  or  pupils,  we  are  under  no  obligation  to  be 
lieve  that  this  poem  was  meant  for  her.  Leigh 
Hunt — not  to  speak  of  Rossetti ! — knew  many  Jen 
nies,  but  none  of  them  ever  sued  him  for  libel. 

[175] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

Sappho,  whom  a  contemporary  called  "the  flower 
of  the  Graces,"  suffered  first  from  her  enemies  and 
then  from  her  friends.  That  "small,  dark  woman" 
who  wrote  immortal  lyrics  and  counted  among  her 
disciples  such  famous  singers  as  Erinna  of  Telos 
and  Damophyla  of  Pamphylia,  was,  after  her  death, 
grossly  calumniated  by  the  ribald  writers  of  Athe 
nian  comedy.  Those  who  believe  in  the  anecdotes 
of  her  which  fill  those  scurrilous  but  entertaining 
pages  cannot  consistently  refuse  to  credit  also  Aris- 
tophanes's  interpretation  of  the  character  of 
Socrates. 

If  we  are  to  take  any  of  Sappho's  poems  as  genu 
ine  personal  expressions,  certainly  we  cannot  pass 
by  her  ode  to  her  brother  Charaxus,  in  which,  in  the 
most  strict,  not  to  say  puritanical,  fashion  she  re 
bukes  him  for  yielding  to  the  charms  of  the  cour 
tesan  Doricha. 

Nor  can  her  correspondence  with  that  Alceus, 
that  "fluent  poet  of  fluctuating  moods,"  as  E.  B. 
Osborn  calls  him,  be  neglected.  Alceus  wrote  to 
her,  in  an  ode  of  which  a  fragment  is  preserved: 
"Violet- weaving,  pure,  sweet-smiling  Sappho,  I 
wish  to  say  somewhat,  but  shame  hinders  me."  And 
Sappho  answered,  primly  enough,  in  another  ode: 
"Hadst  thou  desire  of  aught  good  or  fair,  shame 
[176] 


SAPPHO  REDIVIVA 

would  not  have  touched  thine  eyes,  hut  thou  wouldst 
have  spoken  openly  thereof." 

The  famous  story  of  Sappho's  vain  pursuit  of 
Phaon,  and  her  death  by  leaping  into  the  sea  from 
the  Leucadian  promontory,  were,  it  may  safely  be 
stated,  inventions  of  the  comic  poets.  Charles  G. 
D.  Roberts,  in  his  introduction  to  Bliss  Carman's 
exquisite  reconstruction  of  Sappho's  lyrics,  sug 
gests  that  the  Phaon  story  is  perhaps  merely  an 
echo  of  the  legend  of  Aphrodite  and  Adonis — who 
is,  indeed,  called  Phaon  in  some  versions. 

But  the  modern  admirers  of  Sappho  have  not 
hesitated  to  accept  as  authentic  such  stories  as  that 
of  her  love  for  the  mythical  Phaon,  in  spite  of  the 
fact  that  they  originated  200  years  after  her  death. 
The  Phaon  myth,  however,  Sappho  herself  might 
forgive,  because  of  the  literature  it  has  begotten — 
Ovid's  immortal  epistle  and  Addison's  fantasy,  to 
mention  only  two  examples.  But  it  is  too  doubtful 
whether  she  would  appreciate  the  eloquent  but 
somewhat  perfervid  hysterical  dithyrambs  of  the 
late  Algernon  Charles  Swinburne  and  his  follow 
ers.  The  "pure  sweet-smiling"  poet  who  scolded 
her  naughty  brother  and  snubbed  the  ardent  Alceus 
was  not: 

[177] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

Love's  priestess,  mad  with  pain  and  joy  of  song, 
Song's  priestess,  mad  with  joy  and  pain  of  love. 

But  she  was  a  great  poet.  If  it  was  not  already 
known,  the  splendid  strophes  recovered  at  Oxy- 
rhyncus  would  prove  it.  E.  B.  O shorn,  writing  in 
the  London  Morning  Post,  has  called  attention  to 
their  resemblance  to  the  Canticle  of  Canticles,  to 
the  way  in  which,  as  he  says,  Love  makes  Lesbos 
and  land-locked  Sharon  provinces  in  one  princi 
pality.  There  is  a  close  kinship  between  the  ideas 
expressed  in  the  first  and  third  stanzas  of  Sappho's 
poem  and  those  of  these  lines: 

"I  have  compared  thee,  O  my  love,  to  a  company 
of  horses  in  Pharaoh's  chariots.  (I.,  9.) 

Who  is  she  that  looketh  forth  as  the  morning, 
fair  as  the  moon,  clear  as  the  sun,  and  terrible  as 
an  army  with  banners?"  (V.,  10.) 

Lesbos  is  on  the  sea,  so  the  picture  of  the  white- 
winged  ships  came  naturally  to  the  mind  of  Sappho. 
But  the  poet  of  Sharon  thought  only  of  Pharaoh's 
shining  cavalry  and  of  (magic  phrase!)  an  "army 
with  banners." 

The  world  cannot  be  too  grateful  to  Messrs. 
Grenfell  and  Hunt  for  their  literary  mining,  and 
to  Mr.  Edmonds  for  his  marvelously  ingenious 
[178] 


SAPPHO  REDIVIVA 

work  of  reconstruction.  We  may  object  to  scholars 
and  commentators,  we  may  regret  their  interpreta 
tions,  but  in  this  instance  men  of  this  sometimes 
irritating  class  have  made  the  world's  literature 
their  debtor.  They  have  recovered,  they  have  al 
most  recreated,  one  of  the  greatest  poems  of  the 
greatest  poet  of  the  greatest  age  of  lyric  poetry. 
It  is  already  a  classic,  this  little  song,  whose  liquid 
Greek  syllables  echo  the  music  of  undying  pas 
sion.  It  is  a  poem  not  unworthy  of  her  whom  the 
amazed  world  called  "the  miracle";  of  whom  in  our 
own  time  that  true  poet  and  wise  critic,  the  late 
Theodore  Watts-Dunton,  wrote: 

Never  before  these  songs  were  sung,  and  never 
since  did  the  human  soul,  in  the  grip  of  a  fiery  pas 
sion,  utter  a  cry  like  hers,  and,  from  the  executive 
point  of  view,  in  directness,  in  lucidity,  in  that  high, 
imperious  verbal  economy  which  only  nature  can 
teach  the  artist,  she  has  no  equal,  and  none  worthy 
to  take  the  place  of  second. 


[179] 


THE  POETRY  OF  GERARD  HOPKINS 

THAT  Gerard  Hopkins  is  to-day  little  known, 
even  among  rhymers,  is  an  inevitable  result 
of  his  manner  of  life  and  work.  He  was  a  priest 
of  the  Catholic  Church  and  a  member  of  the  Society 
of  Jesus.  His  faith  was  the  source  of  his  poetry, 
but  his  arduous  labors  in  its  service  left  him  little 
time  for  celebrating  it  in  verse,  and  made  him  so 
indifferent  to  applause  that  he  never  published. 
Sir  Arthur  Quiller-Couch  put  his  "The  Starlight 
Night"  in  the  "Oxford  Book  of  Victorian  Verse," 
and  he  is  represented  in  Orby  Shipley's  "Carmina 
Mariana"  and  H.  C.  Beeching's  "Lyra  Sacra." 
Several  of  his  poems  are  included  in  Volume  VIII 
of  "Poets  and  Poetry  of  the  Century"  with  a  cri 
tique  by  his  friend  Robert  Bridges,  and  Miss  Kath- 
erine  Bregy  has  made  him  the  subject  of  an  illu 
minative  essay  in  her  admirable  book  "The  Poet's 
Chantry."  A  scant  bibliography  indeed  for  a  gen 
uinely  inspired  poet,  the  most  scrupulous  word- 
artist  of  the  nineteenth  century ! 
[180] 


POETRY  OF  GERARD  HOPKINS 

The  world  is  charged  with  the  grandeur  of  God. 
It  will  flame  out  like  shining  from  shook  foil. 

These  opening  lines  of  a  sonnet  illustrate  clearly 
Gerard  Hopkins'  spirit  and  method.  Like  that 
other  Jesuit,  Robert  Southwell,  he  was  a  Catholic 
poet:  for  him  to  write  a  poem  on  a  secular  theme 
was  difficult,  almost  impossible.  He  sang  "the 
grandeur  of  God,"  and  for  his  song  he  used  a 
language  which  in  its  curious  perfection  is  ex 
clusively  his  own. 

One  may  search  his  writings  in  vain  for  a  figure 
that  is  not  novel  and  true.  He  took  from  his  own 
experience  those  comparisons  that  are  the  material 
of  poetry,  and  rejected,  it  seems,  such  of  them  as 
already  bore  marks  of  use.  For  him,  the  grandeur 
of  God  flames  out  from  the  world  not  like  light 
from  stars,  but  like  "shining  from  shook  foil."  He 
writes  not  of  soft  hands,  nor  of  velvety  hands,  but 
of  "feel-of-primrose  hands."  He  writes  not  that 
thrush's  eggs  are  blue  as  the  sky,  but  that  they 
"look  little  low  heavens."  The  starry  skies  of  a 
winter  night  are  "the  dim  woods  quick  with  dia 
mond  wells,"  or  "the  gray  lawns  cold  where  quak 
ing  gold-dew  lies."  In  Spring  "the  blue  is  all  in  a 
rush  with  richness,"  and  Summer  "plashes  amid 
the  billowy  apple-trees  his  lusty  hands." 

[181] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

Now,  it  may  be  that  these  exquisite  figures  would 
not  entitle  their  maker  to  high  praise  if  they  were 
isolated  bits  of  splendor,  if  (like  the  economical 
verse-makers  of  our  own  day)  he  had  made  each 
one  the  excuse  for  a  poem.  But  they  come  in  be 
wildering  profusion.  Gerard  Hopkins'  poems  are 
successions  of  lovely  images,  each  a  poem  in  itself. 

This  statement  may  give  its  reader  the  idea  that 
of  Gerard  Hopkins'  poetry  may  be  said,  as  Charles 
Ricketts  said  of  Charles  Conder's  pictures,  "There 
are  too  many  roses,"  No  one  who  reads  his  poems, 
however,  will  make  this  criticism.  The  roses  are 
there  of  right — all  of  them.  They  are,  it  may  be 
said,  necessary  roses.  They  are  the  cunningly 
placed  elements  of  an  elaborate  pattern,  a  pattern 
of  which  roses  are  the  appropriate  material.  And 
the  red  and  white  of  their  petals  come  from  the 
blood  and  tears  that  nourished  their  roots. 

It  is  the  overwhelming  greatness  of  this  theme 
that  justifies  the  lavishness  of  his  method.  The 
word  "mystic"  is  nowadays  applied  so  wantonly  to 
every  gossiper  about  things  supernatural  that  it  is 
to  most  people  meaningless.  For  the  benefit  of 
those  who  know  the  difference  between  Saint  The 
resa  and  Miss  Evelyn  Underbill,  however,  it  may 
be  stated  that  Gerard  Hopkins  was  more  nearly  a 
£182] 


POETRY  OF  GERARD  HOPKINS 

true  mystic  than  either  Francis  Thompson  or 
Lionel  Johnson.  The  desire,  at  any  rate,  for  the 
mystical  union  with  God  is  evident  in  every  line  he 
wrote,  and  even  more  than  his  friend  Coventry  Pat- 
more  he  knew  the  "dark  night  of  the  soul." 

This  being  the  case,  his  theme  being  God  and 
his  writing  being  an  act  of  adoration,  it  is  profitless 
to  criticize  him,  as  Mr.  Robert  Bridges  has  done, 
for  "sacrificing  simplicity"  and  violating  those  mys 
terious  things,  the  "canons  of  taste."  A  sane  editor 
of  a  popular  magazine  would  reject  everything  he 
wrote.  A  verse-writer  who  does  not  know  that 
"The  Habit  of  Perfection"  is  true  poetry  is  not  a 
poet.  Here  it  is: 

Elected  Silence,  sing  to  me 

And  beat  upon  my  whorled  ear; 

Pipe  me  to  pastures  still,  and  be 
The  music  that  I  care  to  hear. 

Shape  nothing,  lips;  be  lovely-dumb: 

It  is  the  shut,  the  curfew  sent 
From  there  where  all  surrenders  come 

Which  only  makes  you  eloquent. 

Be  shelled,  eyes,  with  double  dark, 

And  find  the  uncreated  light : 
This  ruck  and  reel  which  you  remark 

Coils,  keeps,  and  teases  simple  sight. 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

Palate,  the  hutch  of  tasty  lust, 
Desire  not  to  be  rinsed  with  wine: 

The  can  must  be  so  sweet,  the  crust 
So  fresh  that  come  in  fasts  divine! 

Nostrils,  your  careless  breath  that  spend 
Upon  the  stir  and  keep  of  pride, 

What  relish  shall  the  censers  send 
Along  the  sanctuary  side! 

O  feel-of -primrose  hands,  O  feet 
That  want  the  yield  of  plushy  sward, 

But  you  shall  walk  the  golden  street, 
And  you  unhouse  and  house  the  Lord. 

And,  Poverty,  be  thou  the  bride 
And  now  the  marriage  feast  begun, 

And  lily-colored  clothes  provide 

Your  spouse,  not  labored-at,  nor  spun. 

Walter  Pater,  Gerard  Hopkins'  tutor  at  Balliol, 
had  no  keener  sensitivity  to  the  color  and  music  of 
language.  Gerard  Hopkins'  purpose — a  purpose 
impossible  of  fulfillment  but  not  therefore  less 
worth  the  effort — was  "to  arrange  words  like  so 
many  separate  gems  to  compose  a  whole  expression 
of  thought,  in  which  the  force  of  grammar  and  the 
beauty  of  rhythm  absolutely  correspond." 

There  will  always  be  those  who  dislike  the  wealth 
£184] 


POETRY  OF  GERARD  HOPKINS 

of  imagery  which  characterizes  Gerard  Hopkins' 
poetry,  because  they  do  not  understand  his  mental 
and  spiritual  attitude.  Perhaps  for  some  critics  an 
altar  cloth  may  be  too  richly  embroidered  and  a 
chalice  too  golden.  Ointment  of  sgikenard  is  "very 
costly." 


[185] 


PHILOSOPHICAL   TENDENCIES    IN 
ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

WHY  do  people  write  poems,  stories  and 
plays?  The  obvious  and  cynical  answer  is 
that  people  write  because  they  are  paid  for  their 
writing;  the  poet  makes  a  poem  for  the  same  reason 
that  the  carpenter  makes  a  bench,  and  the  dramatist 
has  no  motive  other  than  that  of  the  bootmaker. 
There  is  some  truth  in  this ;  if  people  do  not  begin 
to  write  because  they  consider  writing  a  means  of 
livelihood  they  often  continue  to  write  for  that  rea 
son.  Certainly  it  is  easy  to  think  of  contemporary 
authors  of  whom  it  may  safely  be  said  that  they 
have  no  inspiration  save  the  desire  for  money. 

But  the  existence  of  literature  is  not  thus  easily 
to  be  explained.  There  are  so  many  trades  and 
professions  easier  and  more  profitable  than  that  of 
letters  that  he  would  be  a  very  stupid  person  indeed 
who  selected  it  with  nothing  to  influence  him  in 
that  direction  but  the  desire  to  make  money. 
There  is  something  else  beside  the  perfectly  legiti 
mate  desire  to  make  a  livelihood  in  the  mind  of 
[186] 


TENDENCIES  IN  LITERATURE 

the  writer;  there  is  something  that  makes  him  un 
dergo  poverty  and  other  tribulations  for  the  sake 
of  his  craft. 

What  is  this  influence?  What  is  it  that  makes 
writers  write?  It  is  no  one  thing.  The  will  to 
write  is  related  to  nearly  all  the  passions,  ambitions 
and  desires  of  mankind ;  it  is  the  result  of  instincts 
immemorial  and  unchanging.  There  are  those  who 
hold  a  peculiar  inspirational  theory  about  writing, 
who  believe  that  an  author  is  merely  the  instrument 
used  by  some  creative  power.  In  so  far  as  this 
theory  coincides  with  the  truth  that  God  is  the 
source  of  all  energy  it  is,  of  course,  sound.  But 
those  who  hold  it  generally  base  it  on  some  fan 
tastic  idea  of  genius  as  a  magic,  unknowable  power, 
irresponsibly  wandering  through  the  world  and 
selecting  at  random  the  men  and  women  who  are 
to  be  through  its  mysterious  spell  creative  artists. 
It  is  a  fascinating  theory,  but  untrue,  being  sup 
ported  only  by  the  citation  of  numerous  particular 
cases,  which  cannot  in  logic  establish  a  general  rule. 

A  careful  examination  of  the  nature  of  genius 
would  here  be  out  of  place.  It  is  sufficient  for  our 
purposes  to  consider  genius  as  extraordinary  talent, 
and  to  know  that  it  is  by  no  means  the  inevitable 
companion  of  the  will  to  write.  The  great  majority 

[187] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

of  writers,  those  who  are  without  skill  and  those 
who  produce  some  interesting  and  even  important 
work,  are  without  genius.  Yet  they  have  the  will 
to  write.  And  there  have  been  instances  of  men  and 
women  of  undoubted  genius  so  lazy  that  they 
seemed  absolutely  to  lack  the  creative  urge  present 
in  the  minds  of  their  less  gifted  brothers  and  sisters. 

There  would  be  writers  if  there  were  no  such 
thing  as  genius  just  as  there  would  be  writers  if 
it  were  impossible  to  make  money  by  writing. 
Consider  the  earliest  days  when  first  by  means  of 
crude  symbols  chiseled  on  a  rock  or  by  means  of 
rough  combinations  of  sounds  a  man  endeavored  to 
convey  to  his  fellows  some  message  not  necessitated 
by  the  ordinary  conditions  of  life — some  message 
important  for  its  own  sake  alone.  What  caused 
this  man  to  carve,  to  chant,  to  express  ideas  so 
that  they  would  be  intelligible  to  his  fellows?  If 
we  understand  the  motives  for  this  man's  conduct, 
if  we  find  out  what  made  him  a  creative  artist,  we 
shall  understand  why  modern  man  writes.  For  the 
motives,  emotions,  essential  habits  of  mankind  do 
not  greatly  change  with  the  passing  of  the  ages; 
the  soul  of  man  has  the  changelessness  of  immortal 
things. 

Motives  are  hard  to  trace  and  they  are  usually 
[188] 


TENDENCIES  IN  LITERATURE 

found  in  combination.  We  cannot  be  sure  that  the 
first  writer  had  only  one  motive,  but  we  can  imagine 
many  motives,  any  one  of  which  would  have  been 
sufficient  to  cause  his  literary  adventure.  These 
may  be  indicated  as  the  urge  to  chronicle,  the  urge 
to  attract,  the  urge  to  worship,  and  the  urge  to 
create.  And  all  these  are  related  to  and  possibly 
included  by  the  need  of  self-expression. 

Among  the  simplest  and  least  literary  people, 
events  that  greatly  disturb  the  routine  of  life — 
wars,  famines,  pestilences,  earthquakes — seem  to 
develop  writers  automatically.  The  great  thing 
has  happened  and  must  have  a  record  safer  than 
man's  fickle  memory.  So  inevitably  come  the 
chronicler  and  his  chronicle.  The  demand  creates 
the  supply.  But  the  desire  to  ensure  remembrance 
of  events  is  not  in  itself  sufficient  to  ensure  the  ex 
istence  of  literature.  There  is  also  what  I  have 
termed  the  urge  to  attract.  The  savage  warrior 
may  carve  on  stone  or  paint  upon  a  strip  of  pale 
bark  a  record  of  his  own  brave  victory  or  ingenious 
escape.  This  he  does  to  attract  the  attention  and 
admiration  of  his  public,  such  as  it  is,  to  his  courage 
and  intelligence.  And  also  the  mere  making  of 
the  record  is  in  itself  an  achievement  certain  to 
bring  to  its  maker  the  wonder  and  esteem  of  those 

[189] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

lacking  this  strange  power.  And  this  sort  of  ad 
miration,  he  finds,  comes  to  him  even  when  the 
things  about  which  he  writes  are  not  his  own  doings. 
So  subjective  art  comes  into  existence.  Man  writes 
because  of  the  urge  to  worship  to-day,  as  he  has 
always  done.  He  utters  prayers  that  have  been 
provided  for  his  needs  by  divinely  constituted  au 
thorities,  and  to  the  unspoken  ejaculation  of  his 
heart  he  silently  gives  the  best  literary  form  pos 
sible  to  him — the  directness  and  passionate  sim 
plicity  proper  to  great  literature.  He  repeats, 
when  he  prays  in  accordance  with  the  forms  pre 
scribed  by  the  Church,  great  literature  which  came 
into  existence  originally  in  response  to  the  urge  to 
worship.  And  in  all  languages  the  writings  of 
most  enduring  loveliness,  even  apart  from  those 
divinely  inspired,  are  those  which  relate  most 
closely  to  worship — those  writings  made  immortal 
by  the  love  of  God.  So  writers  may  fulfill  the  pur 
pose  for  which  they  are  made  by  writing — may 
know  God  better  by  writing  about  Him,  increase 
their  love  of  Him  by  expressing  it  in  beautiful 
words,  serve  Him  in  this  world  by  means  of  their 
best  talent,  and  because  of  this  service  and  His 
mercy  be  happy  with  Him  forever  in  Heaven. 

There  is  also  the  motive  which  perhaps  gives 
[190] 


TENDENCIES  IN  LITERATURE 

rise  to  the  common  and  fallacious  idea  of  the  writ 
er's  inspiration — the  motive  which  I  have  desig 
nated  as  the  urge  to  create.  Of  course  the  only 
true  creator  is  God,  and  for  a  creature  to  seem  to 
create  may  be  a  perilous  thing,  savoring  of  blas 
phemy.  Certainly  the  evil  egotism  of  some  writers, 
using  their  talent  for  the  destruction  of  their  souls 
and  those  of  others,  is  a  blasphemous  thing.  This 
is  a  matter  better  suited  for  discussion  by  a  moral 
theologian  than  by  a  critic,  but  surely  it  is  possible 
for  the  writer  to  assay  his  task  of  creating  a  work 
of  art  the  more  humbly  and  the  more  joyfully  be 
cause  it  is  done  in  reverent  imitation  of  the  Maker 
or  Poet  of  the  universe. 

Now,  a  writer  does  not  analyze  or  separate  his 
motives.  They  all  are  related  to  and  possibly  in 
cluded  by  the  need  of  self-expression.  There  is  an 
idea  in  the  writer's  brain  which  he  wishes  to  put 
into  words  and  on  paper.  He  does  so,  without 
bothering  to  try  to  discover  why  he  has  this  impulse. 

The  existence  of  these  motives,  in  various  com 
binations,  is  evident  in  all  literature.  The  novelist 
wishes  to  create  a  thing  of  beauty,  to  chronicle  cer 
tain  actual  or  possible  events,  to  attract  admiration 
to  himself  and  perhaps  to  a  certain  class  or  race  of 
men.  If  he  is  a  great  writer  he  has  also,  even  if  he 

[191] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

be  not  thoroughly  conscious  of  it,  the  desire  to 
worship — he  uses  his  talent  honestly  and  skillfully, 
for  God's  sake,  making  an  acceptable  offering.  He 
may  write  a  drama  of  modern  life,  a  story  of 
pioneer  days  in  the  Far  West,  a  sonnet  to  a  butter 
cup,  a  pamphlet  in  favor  of  improved  tenement 
houses,  a  history  of  the  Spanish- American  War. 
Whatever  he  may  write,  his  desire  is  to  chronicle, 
at  attract,  and  to  create.  And  if  he  be  a  great 
writer  his  desire  also  is  to  worship. 

The  power  and  desire  to  influence  thought  pos 
sessed  by  skillful  writers  has  caused  the  world 
sometimes  to  regard  them  as  actually  the  leaders 
of  mankind's  spiritual  and  intellectual  endeavors. 
Writers  themselves  are  quick  to  take  this  point 
of  view;  we  have  in  America  hundreds  of  popular 
novelists  who  have  no  hesitation  in  advising  hu 
manity  about  all  its  moral  problems,  thousands  of 
minor  poets  who  will  answer  the  questions  of  the 
ages  in  a  sonnet  or  a  handful  of  free  verse.  There 
are  some  reasons  for  the  writers  to  be  justly  con 
sidered  leaders  of  popular  thought.  As  a  class, 
they  understand  humanity,  and  sympathize  with  it. 
They  have  the  passions  and  hopes  and  loves  of  the 
rest  of  the  world,  intensified.  Also  they  have  a 
[192] 


TENDENCIES  IN  LITERATURE 

sense  of  artistic,  or,  as  it  is  called,  poetic  justice,  and 
poetic  justice  usually  is  Christian  justice. 

But  writers  are  unfitted  to  be  leaders  of  popular 
thought  by  many  disqualifications  inseparable  from 
their  craft.  Interested  as  they  are  in  the  rest  of 
humanity,  they  inevitably  are  set  apart  from  it  by 
reason  of  their  exceptional  gift.  They  show  their 
sense  of  this  separation,  even  when  they  do  not 
openly  admit  it,  by  dressing  and  talking  and  living 
in  a  manner  different  from  that  common  to  their  fel 
low-citizens.  The  velvet  jacket,  the  long  hair,  the 
flowing  necktie,  the  Bohemian  studio,  the  defiance 
of  custom  and  sometimes  of  law — these  things  are 
indications  of  that  separation  from  mankind  which 
makes  the  writer  an  unsafe  leader  of  popular 
thought.  There  is  also  the  danger  that  the  writer 
will,  if  he  become  a  leader  of  thought,  grow  intoxi 
cated  with  power,  and  lead  thought  irresponsibly, 
foolishly,  wickedly,  having  in  mind  not  the  welfare 
of  humanity  but  the  delight  of  leadership.  To  this 
temptation  all  leaders  of  thought — politicians,  edu 
cators,  investigators — are  liable,  but  the  writers 
most  of  all. 

The  proper  function  of  the  writer  is  rather  to 
interpret  than  to  lead  the  thought  of  his  time. 
Seldom  does  a  writer  actually  give  the  world  a 

[193] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

new  idea.  What  he  does  is  to  give  expression  to  an 
idea  which  has  lain  dormant  in  the  mind  of  the 
people  awaiting  his  revealing  and  quickening  touch. 
There  is  a  hope  or  a  fear  in  the  minds  of  men — it 
finds  expression  in  deeds  and  simultaneously  in 
words.  The  events  in  a  nation's  history  and  the  in 
tellectual  and  spiritual  causes  of  those  events  are 
revealed  to  later  generations  by  the  poets  and  story 
tellers.  The  historical  development  of  nations  is 
clear  to  the  students  of  the  world's  literature.  Take 
the  American  Civil  War  for  an  example — we  find 
the  soul  of  the  North  revealed  in  "Marching 
Through  Georgia"  and  the  "Battle  Hymn  of  the 
Republic"  and  the  soul  of  the  South  in  "Dixie"  and 
in  "Maryland,  My  Maryland."  No  volumes  of 
history  give  us  a  clearer  understanding  of  the  feel 
ings  of  our  fathers  than  do  these  poems.  So  also 
I  believe  that  the  awakening  to  a  sense  of  the  evil 
of  the  so-called  Reformation,  that  awakening 
which  is  historically  recorded  by  the  events  associ 
ated  with  the  Oxford  Movement,  found  literary  ex 
pression  in  the  poetry  of  Rossetti  and  Patmore  and 
the  other  members  of  the  Pre-Raphaelite  Brother 
hood. 

Since  the  development  which  history  records  is 
merely  the  outward  and  visible  sign  of  an  inward 
[194] 


TENDENCIES  IN  LITERATURE 

and  spiritual  progress,  therefore  the  proper  theiues 
of  creative  literary  artists  are  those  things  which 
the  professed  historians  cannot  treat — the  hidden 
things,  the  essentials  of  history.  So  the  writers 
whose  work  endures  are  those  who  concern  them 
selves  with  the  interior,  not  the  exterior,  of  life. 
The  great  writers  are  the  spiritual  historians  of 
their  generation.  Physical  man  is  important  only 
in  relation  to  spiritual  man./  Man  by  himself,  man 
not  considered  in  respect  to  God,  is  unworthy  of  the 
attention  of  any  writer.  The  men  and  women 
whose  plays  and  poems  and  stories  endure  are  those 
who  see  that  one  cannot  "know  himself"  if  he  "pre 
sume  not  God  to  scan."  They  know  that  the  proper 
study  of  mankind,  and  the  theme  of  all  literature 
worthy  of  the  name,  is  the  soul  of  man. 

Literature  is  a  matter  of  spiritual  chronicle  and 
interpretation.  Therefore  its  beauty  must,  as 
Keats  said,  be  truth.  The  writer  approaches 
beauty  in  proportion  as  the  subject  of  his  inter 
pretation  approaches  truth.  It  is  a  fact  that  a 
writer  may  express  an  idea  which  seems  contrary 
to  the  feeling  of  his  time — may  praise  economic 
justice,  for  instance,  in  the  day  of  great  industrial 
tyranny,  or  in  general  express  idealism  among  ma 
terialists.  But  this  should  not  make  us  consider  him 

[195] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

an  untruthful  interpreter.  Ideas  implicit  in  the 
people  may  be  explicit  in  the  writer.  And  again 
the  writer  may  express  the  thought  of  a  minority 
more  significant  than  the  majority. 

The  popularity  of  a  writer  may  be  geographical 
or  temporal — perhaps  numerical  would  give  a 
clearer  idea  of  my  meaning  than  geographical. 
That  is,  he  may  be  read  in  his  own  time  by  many 
people,  spread  over  a  great  part  of  the  world's  sur 
face,  or  he  may  have  the  attention  of  a  public  which 
is  great  because  it  extends  through  the  ages.  The 
second  sort  of  popularity  is  that  which  the  great 
writers  receive,  and  sometimes  they  have  the  first 
kind  also.  The  great  writer,  the  universal  writer, 
is  universal  in  his  theme.  And  there  is  only  one 
theme  that  is  universal — God. 


[196] 


TWO  LECTURES  ON  ENGLISH 
POETRY 

THE  BALLAD 

1  BEGIN  the  consideration  of  the  forms  of  versi 
fication  with  the  ballad,  for  two  reasons.  In  the 
first  place,  this  is  historically  the  correct  procedure. 
The  earliest  English  poetry  that  has  come  down 
to  us  is  in  this  form;  it  is  the  ballad  that,  recited 
in  the  great  hall  of  the  castle  on  a  Winter  evening 
by  some  wandering  bard,  delighted  the  simple 
hearts  of  our  remote  forefathers,  strong,  rude  men, 
few  of  whom  ever  tasted  the  dainties  that  are  bred 
in  a  book.  The  ballad  gave  pleasure  not  only  to 
the  lord  and  his  lady,  as  they  reclined  in  their  great 
oaken  chairs,  but  also  the  chaplain  and  the  men-at- 
arms  and  the  serving  folk  clustered  together  toward 
the  foot  of  the  table.  For  the  ballad  is  universal 
in  its  appeal,  it  is  the  most  democratic  kind  of 
poetry.  Perhaps  it  is  not  the  most  primitive  sort; 
the  songs  of  worship  or  praise  or  love  wrhich  grew 
out  of  the  earliest  dance  rituals  may  have  been  more 
closely  akin  to  the  lyric.  But  these  songs  must  soon 

[197] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

have  developed  into  a  recital  of  the  deeds  of  the 
god  or  hero  celebrated;  they  must  have  taken  on 
that  narrative  style  which  is  the  essential  of  the  bal 
lad.  We  may  choose  to  call  Chaucer's  "Canter 
bury  Pilgrims"  an  epic,  if  we  will,  but  even  so  we 
cannot  avoid  the  feeling  that  it  is  a  sequence  of 
ballads.  And  after  all  an  epic  is  nothing  but  a 
ballad  de  luxe. 

The  second  reason  for  considering  the  ballad  first 
among  the  forms  of  English  verse  is  the  ease  with 
which  it  may  be  written.  It  is  the  simplest  form 
of  poetical  composition,  and  the  novice  in  the  craft 
of  versification  will  not  find  it  difficult  to  attain 
in  it,  after  a  few  attempts,  a  fair  measure  of  success. 

What  is  the  ballad?  Let  me  begin  by  saying 
what  it  is  not.  It  is  not  a  brief  song,  although  of 
late  years  the  word  has  been  generally  used  to  desig 
nate  almost  any  rimed  composition  set  to  music. 
People  who  speak  of  some  of  the  popular  songs  of 
the  day  as  "sentimental  ballads"  are  using  the  term 
incorrectly.  They  mean,  as  a  rule,  "sentimental 
lyrics."  In  bygone  years  the  ballad  was  sung,  or 
at  any  rate  recited,  to  the  accompaniment  of  a  harp 
or  other  stringed  instrument.  But  in  modern  times 
the  lyric  is  almost  the  only  sort  of  poetry  to  re 
ceive  a  musical  setting. 
[198] 


LECTURES  ON  ENGLISH  POETRY 

Furthermore,  the  ballad  is  not  the  ballade.  The 
ballade  is  a  highly  artificial  form  of  verse,  French 
in  origin,  consisting,  as  a  rule,  of  three  eight-line 
stanzas  and  a  four-line  envoi,  with  only  three 
rhymes  in  all  twenty-eight  lines.  People  with  a 
taste  for  untra-modern  spelling  sometimes  label 
these  productions  "ballads"  instead  of  "ballades," 
and  other  people  sometimes  try  to  give  their  ballads 
an  archaic  flavor  by  labeling  them  "ballades."  Both 
practices  are  utterly  unjustifiable.  A  ballade  is  no 
more  a  ballad  than  a  sonnet  is  a  quatrain. 

What,  then,  is  a  ballad?  In  "On  the  History  of 
the  Ballads,  1100-1500"  (Proceedings  of  the  Brit 
ish  Academy,  Volume  IV),  Professor  W.  P.  Ker 
writes:  "The  truth  is  that  the  ballad  is  an  ideal,  a 
poetical  form,  which  can  take  up  any  matter,  and 
does  not  leave  that  matter  as  it  was  before."  But 
this,  of  course,  is  no  definition.  It  would  apply 
equally  well  to  all  forms  of  poetry.  Professor  Ker 
continues:  "In  spite  of  Socrates  and  his  logic  we 
may  venture  to  say,  in  answer  to  the  question 
What  is  a  ballad?'— 'A  Ballad  is  "The  Milldams  of 
Binnorie"  and  "Sir  Patrick  Spens"  and  "The 
Douglas  Tragedy"  and  "Lord  Randal"  and 
"Childe  Maurice,"  and  things  of  that  sort.'  " 

That  greatest  of  anthologists,  Sir  Arthur  Quil- 

[199] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

ler-Couch,  quotes  these  remarks  of  Professor  Ker 
in  the  preface  to  his  volume  "The  Oxford  Book  of 
Ballads,"  a  book  which  every  lover  of  poetry  and 
especially  every  member  of  the  craft  of  verse-mak 
ing  should  possess.  He  goes  on  to  supplement  Pro 
fessor  Ker's  definition,  or  rather  description,  by 
quoting  lines  from  a  number  of  famous  ballads  of 
ancient  days,  and  saying  that  the  ballad  is  these 
things  also  and  in  proof  of  the  statement  that  bal 
lads  are  diverse  in  manner  and  theme  he  mentions 
as  latter-day  ballad-makers  poets  having  so  little 
in  common  as  Sir  Walter  Scott,  Coleridge  and 
Rudyard  Kipling.  Thus  do  Professor  Ker  and 
Sir  Arthur  Quiller-Couch  evade  the  task  of  defini 
tion-making.  But  they  are  critics  of  poetry  and 
therefore  entitled  to  the  use  of  escapes  and  eva 
sions  denied  to  the  author  of  a  text-book.  Let  me 
therefore  say  with  no  thought  of  originality  in  the 
saying,  that  a  ballad  is  a  story  told  in  verse.  Usu 
ally  it  is  told  in  a  sequence  of  quatrains,  with  one 
rhyme  to  a  stanza,  and  usually  the  line  is  the  iambic 
heptameter — or  rather  the  stanza  consists  of  two 
iambic  tetrameters  and  two  iambic  trimeters.  But 
this  form  is  not  inevitable ;  the  only  thing  inevitable 
about  a  ballad  is  that  it  shall  be  a  story. 

Of  the  ancient  ballads  there  are  many  collections, 
[200] 


LECTURES  ON  ENGLISH  POETRY 

of  which  the  most  famous  are  those  of  Bishop  Percy 
and  of  Professor  Child.  But  Sir  Arthur  Quiller- 
Couch's  book,  already  mentioned,  is  sufficiently 
comprehensive  for  the  needs  of  the  ordinary  stu 
dent  of  the  subject. 

In  the  preface  to  this  book,  Sir  Arthur  says  a 
rather  surprising  thing.  He  says:  "While  the 
lyric  in  general,  still  making  for  variety,  is  to-day 
more  prolific  than  ever  and  (all  cant  apart)  prom 
ises  fruit  to  equal  the  best,  that  particular  offshoot 
which  we  call  the  ballad  has  been  dead,  or  as  good 
as  dead,  for  two  hundred  years." 

It  is  hard  to  understand  why  Sir  Arthur  Quil- 
ler-Couch  made  this  statement.  In  his  "The  Ox 
ford  Book  of  English  Verse"  and  "The  Oxford 
Book  of  Victorian  Verse"  he  had  included  so  many 
true  ballads— Rossetti's  "The  Blessed  Damozel," 
and  Dobell's  "Keith  of  Ravelston" — which  is  as 
authentic  a  ballad  as  "Thomas  the  Rhymer"  or 
"Sir  Patrick  Spens."  Also  Kipling  was  making 
genuine  ballads  of  land  and  water,  and  Henry 
Newbolt  was  writing  his  glorious  ballads  of  the 
British  Navy.  The  ballad  was  far  from  dead;  it 
was  no  longer  the  only  popular  form  of  poetry,  but 
it  had  not  ceased  to  thrive.  And  the  Great  War 
seems  to  have  given  English  and  American  poets 

[201] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

new  enthusiasm  for  this  form  so  suited  to  the 
chronicling  of  deeds  of  valor. 

I  have  said  that  the  true  ballad  was  a  story  told 
in  verse.  Let  me  add  that,  according  to  the  strict 
est  interpretation  of  the  term,  the  story  must  be 
told  throughout  in  the  third  person — the  narrator 
must  be  merely  a  narrator,  he  cannot  figure  in  the 
tale.  This  is  true  of  most  of  the  old  ballads.  There 
are  exceptions  to  the  rule,  however,  notably  "Ar 
chie  of  Cawfield"  and  the  immortal  "Helen  of  Kir- 
connel."  Nor  is  it  necessary  that  the  modern  bal 
lad-maker  should  take  pains  to  eliminate  his  own 
personality  from  his  work,  the  modern  tendency 
seems  to  be  toward  subjectivity  in  poetry  and  the 
verse-maker  who  seeks  popular  approval  will  be 
guided  by  popular  tastes. 

It  is  true  that  the  very  greatest  of  the  ballads 
are  those  which  were  written  in  the  days  when  the 
ballad  had  not  to  compete  with  other  forms.  But 
in  accordance  with  the  principle  underlying  this 
work — that  of  exhibiting  the  work  of  successful 
modern  poetic  craftsmen,  I  will  not  quote  "Sir 
Patrick  Spens"  or  "Hugh  of  Lincoln"  or  "Cos- 
patrick"  or  "Little  Musgrave  and  Lady  Barnard'* 
or  any  other  classic.  Instead,  I  will  call  the  read 
er's  attention  to  the  work  of  some  of  the  poets 
[202] 


LECTURES  OX  ENGLISH  POETRY 

who,  in  our  own  time,  have  been  proving  the  falsity 
of  Sir  Arthur  Quiller- Couch's  statement. 

THE  SONNET 

I  said  that  the  ballad  was  the  most  primitive 
form  of  English  verse  composition  of  which  ex 
amples  have  come  down  to  us,  and  that  it  was  the 
easiest  form  to  write.  I  now  come  to  what  might 
almost  be  called  the  antithesis  of  the  ballad — the 
sonnet.  The  ballad  is  simple,  the  sonnet  is  com 
plex;  the  ballad  appeals  to  the  uneducated,  being, 
as  I  said,  merely  a  short  story  in  verse,  while  the 
sonnet  appeals  chiefly  to  those  who  have  a  culti 
vated  taste  for  poetry.  It  is  easy,  I  said,  to  write 
a  passable  ballad;  to  write  a  sonnet  that  is  merely 
correct  in  technique  is  a  difficult  matter,  and  to 
write  a  good  sonnet  calls  for  the  exercise  of  all  a 
verse-maker's  patience,  ingenuity  and  talent. 

Theodore  Watts-Dunton,  himself  an  accom 
plished  sonneteer,  finds  the  sonnet  as  "in  the  lit 
erature  of  modern  Europe,  a  brief  poetic  form  of 
fourteen  rhymed  verses,  ranged  according  to  pre 
scription."  This  definition  is  open  to  criticism  in 
two  respects.  In  the  first  place  it  is  redundant, 
since  a  poem  of  fourteen  lines  necessarily  is  brief. 
In  the  second  place  Watts-Dunton  neglected  to 

[203] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

state  that  the  length  of  the  line  is  arbitrarily  fixed — 
if  the  lines  are  not  iambic  pentameters,  the  poem  is 
not  a  sonnet. 

The  first  requirements  of  the  sonnet,  then,  are 
that  it  shall  have  fourteen  lines,  and  that  these 
lines  shall  be  iambic  pentameters.  Furthermore, 
the  rhyme  scheme  is  arbitrarily  fixed,  and  the  num 
ber  of  rhymes  arbitrarily  limited  in  such  a  way  as 
to  add  greatly  to  the  verse-maker's  labor. 

The  simplest  form  of  the  sonnet  is  what  is  called 
the  Shakespearean  sonnet,  from  its  use  in  the 
famous  sequence  in  which  the  greatest  of  English 
poets  is  said  to  have  "unlocked  his  heart" — al 
though  this  does  not  seem  a  fair  description  of  it, 
when  we  consider  the  great  library  of  books  in 
which  attempts  are  made  to  explain  what  Shake 
speare  meant  in  these  sonnets.  This  form  consists 
merely  of  the  quatrains,  rhyming  a,  b,  a,  ID,  c,  d,  c, 
&,  e,  f,  e,  -f,  followed  by  a  rhymed  couplet.  The 
lines  are,  as  in  all  forms  of  the  sonnet,  iambic 
pentameters. 

Obviously,  this  form  presents  no  real  difficulty 
to  the  verse-maker  with  a  fair  degree  of  talent.  Its 
use  by  Shakespeare  gives  it  a  certain  authority,  and 
some  critics,  notably  Professor  Israel  Gollancz,  of 
London  University,  say  that  it  is  better  suited  the 
[204] 


LECTURES  ON  ENGLISH  POETRY 

English  language  than  the  more  usual  or  Petrar 
chan  form.  Nevertheless,  the  weight  of  opinion  is 
against  this  form.  Many  critics  deny  that  three 
quatrains  followed  by  a  couplet  constitute  a  true 
sonnet,  and  Professor  Brander  Matthews  always 
calls  this  form  not  a  sonnet  but  a  "fourteener." 
Modern  English  poets  who  have  written  Shake 
spearean  sonnets  are  few  in  number.  George  Eliot 
wrote  a  sequence  in  this  form,  but  did  not  thereby 
add  to  her  fame.  In  fact,  the  only  notable  use  of 
the  Shakespearean  sonnet  form  during  the  last  half 
century  is  to  be  found  in  John  Masefield's  "Good 
Friday  and  Other  Poems,"  which  contain  a  se 
quence  of  introspective  and  philosophical  Shake 
spearean  sonnets,  so  lofty  in  thought  and  appropri 
ate  in  expression  as  actually  to  suggest  the  work 
of  the  poet  who  first  greatly  made  use  of  their 
instrument. 

The  form  generally  used  by  poets  writing  in 
English  is  what  is  called  the  Petrarchan  sonnet.  In 
its  simplest  but  not  its  easiest  form,  this  consists  of 
a  division  of  eight  lines  called  the  octave  and  a 
division  of  six  lines  called  the  sestet,  the  rhyme 
scheme  of  the  octave  being  a,  b,  b,  a,  a,  b,  b}  a,  and 
that  of  the  sestet  being  c,  d,  c,  d,  c,  d.  Here  we 
have,  you  see,  only  four  rhymes  in  all  the  fourteen 

[205] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

lines.  An  excellent  example  of  the  Petrarchan 
sonnet  of  this  exact  type  is  Austin  Dobson's  "Don 
Quixote.'* 

DON  QUIXOTE 

BY  AUSTIN   DOBSON 

Behind  thy  pasteboard,  on  thy  battered  hack, 
Thy  lean  cheek  striped  with  plaster  to  and  fro, 
Thy  long  spear  levelled  at  the  unseen  foe, 
And  doubtful  Sancho  trudging  at  thy  back, 
Thou  wert  a  figure  strange  enough,  good  lack! 
To  make  wiseacredom,  both  high  and  low, 
Rub  purblind  eyes,  and   (having  watched  thee 

go) 

Dispatch  its  Dogberrys  upon  thy  track: 

Alas!  poor  Knight!    Alas!  poor  soul  possest! 

Yet  would  to-day,  when  Courtesy  grows  chill, 
And  life's  fine  loyalties  are  turned  to  jest, 

Some  fire  of  thine  might  burn  within  us  still! 
Ah,  would  but  one  might  lay  his  lance  in  rest 

And  charge  in  earnest — were  it  but  a  mill! 

This  is  a  good  sonnet  to  study  for  several  rea 
sons.  In  the  first  place  the  accuracy  of  the  form 
makes  it  an  excellent  model.  And  in  the  second 
place  it  illustrates  what  I  have  to  say  as  to  the  cor 
respondence  in  the  thought  of  the  sonnet  and  its 
form. 
£206] 


LECTURES  ON  ENGLISH  POETRY 

Now,  there  have  been  attempts  to  make  a  sonnet 
the  vehicle  of  a  narrative ;  these  attempts  have  sel 
dom  been  successful.  A  sonnet  is  descriptive  and 
interpretative  in  theme,  and  it  must  give  at  the 
very  least  two  aspects  of  interpretations  of  the 
emotion,  idea,  or  object  with  which  it  deals.  One 
of  these  must  be  in  the  octave  and  the  other  in 
the  sestet.  Sometimes  the  idea  is  merely  expressed 
or  described  in  the  octave,  and  explained  in  the 
sestet,  sometimes  the  idea  in  the  octave  suggests  a 
different  idea  in  the  sestet — the  point  to  remember 
is  that  there  must  be  a  change  in  the  thought 
marked  by  the  beginning  of  the  sonnet's  ninth  line. 

This  we  see  admirably  illustrated  in  Austin  Dob- 
son's  "Don  Quixote."  In  the  first  four  lines  we 
have  a  graphic  picture  of  the  mad  knight  of 
La  Mancha,  and  a  statement  of  the  effect  this  vision 
has  upon  those  who  are  wise  in  this  world.  But  the 
very  first  words  of  the  sestet  show  the  development 
in  the  thought.  The  poet  ceases  to  describe,  in 
stead  he  expresses  emotion,  he  expresses  his  pity, 
his  sympathy,  his  admiration  for  Don  Quixote,  and 
his  wish  that  the  knight  might  find  a  successor  in 
our  own  day.  The  octave  has  its  climax  and  the 
sestet  has  its  climax,  and  the  two  sections  of  the 

[207} 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

poem  are  related  by  the  continuity  of  thought,  and 
divided  by  the  contrast  of  ideas. 

This  type  of  sonnet  was  called  by  Watts-Dunton 
the  sonnet  of  flow  and  ebb — the  significance  of  this 
term  being  that  the  thought  flowed  to  the  end 
of  the  octave  and  ebbed  from  that  point  to  the  close 
of  the  sestet.  Commenting  on  this  John  Addington 
Symonds  wrote:  "The  striking  metaphorical  sym 
bol  drawn  from  the  observation  of  the  swelling  and 
declining  wave  can  even  in  some  examples  be  ap 
plied  to  sonnets  on  the  Shakespearean  model;  for, 
as  a  wave  may  fall  gradually  or  abruptly,  so  the 
sonnet  may  sink  with  stately  volume  or  with  pre 
cipitate  subsidence  to  its  close." 

For  a  verse-maker  to  give  his  sonnet  this  requisite 
flow  and  ebb  of  idea,  and  keep  at  the  same  time 
his  rhyme  scheme  accurate  is  no  easy  matter.  And 
the  very  difficulty  of  the  form  is  a  strong  argu 
ment  in  favor  of  its  frequent  use  by  novices  in 
versification.  If  you  can  write  a  sonnet  that  is 
technically  correct,  you  need  fear  none  of  the  dif 
ficulties  that  any  other  kind  of  verse-making  will 
present.  The  accuracy  and  condensation,  the  con 
centration  of  thought,  the  straight-forwardness  of 
statement,  which  are  the  distinguishing  marks  of 
the  well-turned  sonnet  are  the  most  valuable  tools 
[208] 


LECTURES  ON  ENGLISH  POETRY 

which  a  verse  writer  can  have.  In  writing,  as  well 
as  he  can,  one  sonnet,  the  verse-maker  will  learn 
more  than  he  could  learn  in  writing  half  a  dozen 
ballads  or  twenty  volumes  full  of  unrhymed  free 
verse. 

This  book  is  intended  for  the  guidance  not  of 
poets  but  of  verse-makers.  Yet  I  cannot  forbear 
quoting  Watts-Dunton's  admirable  statement  of 
the  whole  content  of  the  sonnet.  He  writes  r 
"Without  being  wholly  artificial,  like  the  rondeau, 
the  sestina,  the  ballade,  the  villanelle,  and  the  rest, 
the  sonnet  is  yet  so  artistic  in  structure,  its  form  is 
so  universally  known,  recognized,  and  adopted  as 
being  artistic,  that  the  too  fervid  spontaneity  and 
reality  of  the  poet's  emotion  may  be  in  a  certain  de 
gree  veiled,  and  the  poet  can  whisper,  as  from  be 
hind  a  mask,  those  deepest  secrets  of  the  heart  which 
could  otherwise  only  find  expression  in  purely  dra 
matic  forms." 

As  I  said,  the  simplest,  and  in  some  respects,  the 
most  difficult  form  of  sonnet,  has  for  the  rhyme 
scheme  a,  b,  b>  a,  a,  b>  b}  a,  c3  d3  c3  d,  c,  d.  But  there 
is  a  tendency  to  vary  the  rhyme  scheme  in  the  sestet 
-the  octave  usually  is  unchanged.  One  common 
variation  is  to  have  the  rhymes  of  the  sestet  c,  d,  e, 
cf  d,  e,  instead  of  c,  d,  c,  d,  c3  d.  This  is  the  scheme 

[209] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

we  find  followed  in  the  sestet  of  two  of  "Three  Son 
nets  on  Oblivion,"  by  a  distinguished  American 
poet,  Mr.  George  Sterling. 

THREE  SONNETS  OF  OBLIVION 
BY  GEOEGE  STERLING 

Oblivion 

Her  eyes  have  seen  the  monoliths  of  kings 

Upcast  like  foam  of  the  effacing  tide; 

She  hath  beheld  the  desert  stars  deride 
The  monuments  of  power's  imaginings: 
About  their  base  the  wind  Assyrian  flings 

The  dust  that  throned  the  satrap  in  his  pride; 

Cambyses  and  the  Memphian  pomps  abide 
As  in  the  flame  the  moth's  presumptuous  wings. 

There  gleams  no  glory  that  her  hand  shall  spare, 
Nor  any  sun  whose  days  shall  cross  her  night, 

Whose  realm  enfolds  man's  empire  and  its  end. 
No  armour  of  renown  her  sword  shall  dare, 
No  council  of  the  gods  withstand  her  might — 
Stricken  at  last  Time's  lonely  Titans  bend. 

The  Night  of  Gods 

Their  mouths  have  drunken  the  eternal  wine — 
The  draught  that  Baal  in  oblivion  sips. 
Unseen  about  their  courts  the  adder  slips, 

Unheard  the  sucklings  of  the  leopard  whine; 

[210] 


LECTURES  ON  ENGLISH  POETRY 

The  toad  has  found  a  resting-place  divine, 
And  bloats  in  stupor  between  Ammon's  lips. 
O  Carthage  and  the  unreturning  ships, 

The  fallen  pinnacle,  the  shifting  Sign! 

Lo!  when  I  hear  from  voiceless  court  and  fane 
Time's  adoration  of  eternity, — 

The  cry  of  kingdoms  past  and  gods  undone, — 
I  stand  as  one  whose  feet  at  noontide  gain 
A  lonely  shore;  who  feels  his  soul  set  free, 
And  hears  the  blind  sea  chanting  to  the  sun. 

In  these  two  sonnets,  you  see,  Mr.  Sterling  has 
in  his  sestet  the  rhymes  c,  d,  e,  c,  d,  e,  thus  having 
more  license  than  the  poet  of  the  sonnet  in  four 
rhymes.  He  uses  the  same  number  of  rhymes  in 
the  final  sonnet  of  this  trilogy,  but  varies  the  order 
of  the  rhymes  in  the  sestet,  having  for  his  scheme 
not  c,  d,  e,  c,  d,  e,  but  c,  d,  A,  e,  c,  e.  One  objection 
to  this  method  is  that  it  produces,  as  you  see,  a 
rhymed  couplet  in  the  midst  of  the  sestet. 

The  Dust  Dethroned 

S argon  is  dust,  Semiramis  a  clod. 

In  crypts  profaned  the  moon  at  midnight  peers  $ 
The  owl  upon  the  Sphinx  hoots  in  her  ears, 
And  scant  and  dere  the  desert  grasses  nod 
Where  once  the  armies  of  Assyria  trod, 

With  younger  sunlight  splendid  on  the  spears; 

[211] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

The  lichens  cling  the  closer  with  the  years, 
And  seal  the  eyelids  of  the  weary  god. 

Where  high  the  tombs  of  royal  Egypt  heave, 
The  vulture  shadows  with  arrested  wings 
The  indecipherable  boasts  of  kings, 

Till  Arab  children  hear  their  mother's  cry 
And  leave  in  mockery  their  toy — they  leave 
The  skull  of  Pharaoh  staring  at  the  sky. 

It  is  seldom  that  we  find  such  a  couplet  as:  "The 
vulture  shadows  with  arrested  wings,  The  indeci 
pherable  boasts  of  kings,"  in  the  midst  of  the  sestet. 
But  there  are  many  verse  writers  who  use  the  coup 
let,  unrelated  in  rhyme  to  the  rest  of  the  sestet,  to 
conclude  the  sonnet.  This  of  course  was  Shake 
speare's  method,  but  Shakespeare,  as  we  have  seen, 
was  not  making  Petrarchan  sonnets.  The  great 
danger  is  that  the  final  couplet  will  give  the  conclu 
sion  of  the  sonnet  too  much  of  a  snap,  too  much  of 
an  epigrammatic  flavor.  Therefore  it  is  well  to 
avoid  this  device,  although  it  cannot  be  denied  that 
some  of  the  greatest  sonnets  in  the  language  end 
in  a  couplet.  Some  years  ago  I  asked  a  number  of 
English  and  American  poets  and  critics  to  name 
their  favorite  brief  poems.  Many  of  them  chose 
sonnets,  and  one  of  them,  Mr.  Edward  J.  Wheeler, 
[212} 


LECTURES  ON  ENGLISH  POETRY 

a  critic  of  experience  and  discrimination,  for  many 
years  the  President  of  the  Poetry  Society  of 
America,  selected  a  sonnet  ending  in  a  couplet — 
Blanco  White's  "Night."  It  may  be  remarked 
that  this  famous  sonnet  is  almost  the  only  one  of 
Blanco  White's  many  compositions  to  escape 
oblivion. 

NIGHT 

BY  JOSEPH  BLANCO  WHITE 

Mysterious  Night!  when  our  first  parent  knew 
Thee  from  report  divine,  and  heard  thy  name, 
Did  he  not  tremble  for  this  lovely  frame, 

This  glorious  canopy  of  light  and  blue? 

Yet  'neath  a  curtain  of  translucent  dew, 
Bathed  in  the  rays  of  the  great  setting  flame, 
Hesperus  with  the  host  of  heaven  came, 

And  lo !  creation  widened  in  man's  view. 

Who  could  have  thought  such  darkness  lay  con 
cealed 

Within  thy  beams,  O  Sun!  or  who  could  find, 
Whilst  fly  and  leaf  and  insect  stood  revealed, 

That  to  such  countless  orbs  thou  mad'st  us  blind! 
Why  do  we  then  shun  Death  with  anxious  strife? 
If  Light  can  thus  deceive,  wherefore  not  Life? 

Here  is  another  sonnet  ending  in  a  couplet,  which 
I  quote  for  several  reasons.    In  the  first  place,  the 

[213] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

poet,  while  using  the  couplet,  has  avoided  the  dan 
gers  of  the  epigram.  In  the  second  place,  he  comes 
as  close  to  writing  a  narrative  as  the  sonneteer  may 
safely  do.  In  the  third  place  he  deviates  from  the 
strict  rules  of  the  sonnet  in  one  important  par 
ticular,  which  should  be  at  once  apparent  to  every 
student  of  the  subject.  I  do  not  refer  to  the  false 
rhyme  of  "Africa"  and  "bar" — the  deviation  which 
I  mean  refers  only  to  the  sonnet  form,  and  has  to 
do  with  the  arrangement  of  the  thought. 

BOOKRA 

BY  CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNEE 

One  night  I  lay  asleep  in  Africa, 
In  a  closed  garden  by  the  city  gate; 
A  desert  horseman,  furious  and  late, 

Came  wildly  thundering  at  the  massive  bar, 

"Open  in  Allah's  name!    Wake,  Mustapha! 

Slain  is  the  Sultan, — treason,  war,  and  hate 
Rage  from  Fez  to  Tetuan!    Open  straight." 

The  watchman  heard  as  thunder  from  afar : 

"Go  to !  in  peace  this  city  lies  asleep ; 

To  all-knowing  Allah  'tis  no  news  you  bring" ; 
Then  turned  in  slumber  still  his  watch  to  keep. 

At  once  a  nightingale  began  to  sing, 
In  oriental  calm  the  garden  lay, — 
Panic  and  war  postponed  another  day. 
[214] 


LECTURES  ON  ENGLISH  POETRY 

The  deviation  to  which  I  refer  is  the  lack  of 
absolute  distinction  between  the  octave  and  the  ses 
tet.  If  the  rules  of  the  sonnet  were  strictly  fol 
lowed,  the  line  which  introduces  the  watchman 
would  begin  the  sestet  instead  of  closing  the  octave. 

The  best  form  of  the  Petrarchan  sonnet  for  the 
novice  in  versification  to  use  in  practice  is  the  form  I 
first  described,  that  in  which  the  rhyme  scheme  is 
a,  b,  by  a,  a,  b,  b,  a,  c,  d,  c,  d,  c,  d.  But  if  you  find 
that  this  at  first  presents  insurmountable  difficulty, 
use  three  rhymes  in  the  sestet  instead  of  two, 
as  in  the  two  poems  following.  In  these,  you  will 
see,  the  rhyme  scheme  of  the  sestet  is  c9  d,  e,  c,  d,  e. 
The  first  is  a  deeply  introspective  study  by  one  of 
the  greatest  women  poets  of  our  generation;  the 
second  is  more  true  to  the  traditional  type  of  son 
net  in  thought,  giving  the  subject  in  the  octave, 
and  the  lesson  drawn  therefrom  in  the  sestet.  It 
is  the  work  of  a  young  American  poet  whose  name 
is  familiar  to  every  reader  of  American  magazines. 

RENOUNCEMENT 
BY  ALICE  MEYNELL 

I  must  not  think  of  thee;  and,  tired  yet  strong, 
I  shun  the  love  that  lurks  in  all  delight — 
The  love  of  thee — and  in  the  blue  heaven's  height, 

[215] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

And  in  the  dearest  passage  of  a  song. 

Oh,  just  beyond  the  fairest  thoughts  that  throng 

This  breast,  the  thought  of  thee  waits  hidden  yet 
bright ; 

But  it  must  never,  never  come  in  sight ; 
I  must  stop  short  of  thee  the  whole  day  long. 

But  when  sleep  comes  to  close  each  difficult  day, 
When  night  gives  pause  to  the  long  watch  I  keep, 

And  all  my  bonds  I  need  must  lay  apart, 
Must  doff  my  will  as  raiment  laid  away, — 

With  the  first  dream  that  comes  with  the  first 

sleep 
I  run,  I  run,  I  am  gathered  to  thy  heart. 

CANDLE-LIGHT 
BY  THOMAS  S.  JONES,  JR. 

As  in  old  days  of  mellow  candle-light, 
A  little  flame  of  gold  beside  the  pane 
Where  icy  branches  blowing  in  the  rain 

Seem  spectre  fingers  of  a  ghostly  night; 

Yet  on  the  hearth  the  fire  is  warm  and  bright, 
The  homely  kettle  steams  a  soft  refrain, 
And  to  one's  mind  old  things  rush  back  again, 

Sweet  tender  things  still  young  in  death's  despite. 

So,  when  the  winter  blasts  across  life's  sea 
Do  beat  about  my  door  and  shale  the  walls 
Until  the  house  must  sink  upon  the  sand, 
[216] 


LECTURES  ON  ENGLISH  POETRY 

Then  on  some  magic  wind  of  memory,  ; 

Borne  swiftly  to  my  heart  a  whisper  falls, — 
And  on  my  arm  the  pressure  of  your  hand! 

Here  is  another  famous  modern  sonnet,  in  which 
the  three  rhymes  of  the  sestet  are  arranged  in  the 
order  c,  d>  e,  e,  c,  d. 

THE  ODYSSEY 
BY  ANDREW  LANG 

As  one  that  for  a  weary  space  has  lain 

Lulled  by  the  song  of  Circe  and  her  wine 
In  gardens  near  the  pale  of  Proserpine, 

Where  that  .ZEaean  isle  forgets  the  main, 

And  only  the  low  lutes  of  love  complain, 
And  only  shadows  of  wan  lovers  pine, — 
As  such  an  one  were  glad  to  know  the  brine 

Salt  on  his  lips,  and  the  large  air  again, — 

So  gladly,  from  the  songs  of  modern  speech 
Men  turn,  and  see  the  stars,  feel  the  free 

Shrill  wind  beyond  the  close  of  heavy  flowers, 
And  through  the  music  of  the  languid  hours, 
They  hear  like  ocean  on  a  western  beach 
The  surge  and  thunder  of  the  Odyssey. 

This  sonnet  has  been  criticized  by  Professor 
Brander  Matthews,  not  on  account  of  its  rhyme 
scheme,  but  because  of  its  lack  of  what  he  calls 

[217] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

tone-color.  I  will  discuss  the  subject  of  tone-color 
later,  but  it  may  be  well  at  this  point  to  explain 
that  this  criticism  means  that  the  rhymes  of  this 
sonnet  are  not  sufficiently  varied — that  "lain"  does 
not  differ  sufficiently  from  "wine,"  and  "free"  does 
not  differ  sufficiently  from  "beach"  (the  first  two 
words  being  similar  in  consonantal  value,  and  the 
second  two  in  vowel  value)  to  warrant  their  use — 
the  theory  being  that  the  rhymes  used  in  a  sonnet 
should  contrast  strongly  with  each  other — "lain" 
and  "hide,"  for  example,  and  "free"  and  "shore," 
for  example,  contrasting  more  strikingly  than  the 
words  used.  This  contrast  in  tone-color,  to  use  that 
phrase,  may  be  noticed  in  this  strongly-wrought 
sonnet  of  William  Watson's.  How  strikingly  the 
sound  of  "old,"  in  the  octave  contrasts  with  that  of 
"ing,"  and  how  strikingly  in  the  sestet  "ove"  con 
trasts  with  "ire."  The  poet  uses  but  two  rhymes 
in  the  sestet,  the  arrangement  being  c,  &,  d,  c,  df  c. 


TO  ONE  WHO  HAD  WRITTEN  IN  DERISION  OF 
THE  BELIEF  IN  IMMORTALITY 

BY  WILLIAM  WATSON 

Dismiss  not  so,  with  light  hard  phrase  and  cold, 
Ev'n  if  it  be  but  fond  imagining, 
The  hope  whereto  so  passionately  cling 

[218] 


LECTURES  ON  ENGLISH  POETRY 

The  dreaming  generations  from  of  old! 
Not  thus,  to  luckless  men,  are  tidings  told 

Of  mistress  lost,  or  riches  taken  wing; 

And  is  eternity  a  slighter  thing, 
To  have  or  lose,  than  kisses  or  than  gold? 

Nay,  tenderly,  if  needs  thou  must,  disprove 
My  loftiest  fancy,  dash  my  grand  desire 
To  see  this  curtain  lift,  these  clouds  retire, 

And  Truth,  a  boundless  dayspring,  blaze  above 
And  round  me ;  and  to  ask  of  my  dead  sire 

His  pardon  for  a  word  that  wronged  his  love. 

Of  course  you  will  find  exceptions  to  the  rules  I 
have  stated,  you  will  find  poets  who  have  combined 
the  Shakespearean  and  Petrarchan  sonnet.  The 
most  usual  way  of  doing  this  is  to  end  the  Petrar 
chan  sonnet  with  the  couplet  typical  of  the  Shake 
spearean  form,  as  in  Blanco  White's  "Night."  But 
sometimes  we  find  the  octave  of  the  sonnet  consist 
ing,  as  in  the  Shakespearean  form,  of  two  quatrains, 
and  the  sestet  approaching  closely  to  the  Petrarchan 
idea.  Such  a  sonnet  is  "Letty's  Globe,"  by  Charles 
Tennyson-Turner,  the  brother  of  Alfred  Tennyson. 
In  this  the  octave  is  Shakespearean — rhyming  a,  6, 
,a,  &,  c,  d,  c,  d,  but  the  sestet  rhymes  e,  /,  /,  g,  e,  g. 

[219] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

LETTY'S  GLOBE 
BY  CHARLES  TENNYSON-TURNER 

When  Letty  had  scarce  passed  her  third  glad  year, 
And  her  young,  artless  words  began  to  flow, 

One  day  we  gave  the  child  a  coloured  sphere 
Of  the  wide  earth,  that  she  might  mark  and  know, 

By  tint  and  outline,  all  its  sea  and  land. 

She  patted  all  the  world ;  old  empires  peeped 

Between  her  baby  fingers;  her  soft  hand 

Was  welcome  at  all  frontiers.    How  she  leaped, 

And  laughed,  and  prattled  in  her  world-wide  bliss ; 
But  when  we  turned  her  sweet  unlearned  eye 
On  our  own  isle,  she  raised  a  joyous  cry, 
"Oh!  yes,  I  see  it,  Letty's  home  is  there!" 

And  while  she  hid  all  England  with  a  kiss, 
Bright  over  Europe  fell  her  golden  hair. 

You  will  find  also  exceptions  to  the  rule  that  the 
thought  of  the  sonnet  shall  be  sharply  differenti 
ated  by  the  pause  between  the  octave  and  the  sestet, 
that  it  shall  flow  in  the  octave  and  ebb  in  the  sestet. 
John  Milton,  for  instance,  certainly  the  author  of 
some  of  the  greatest  sonnets  in  the  English  tongue, 
blended  the  octave  of  his  sonnets  with  their  sestets, 
letting,  as  a  critic  has  said,  "octave  flow  into  sestet 
without  break  of  music  or  thought."  Thus,  says 
Watts-Dunton,  Milton,  in  his  use  of  the  Petrarchan 
£220] 


LECTURES  ON  ENGLISH  POETRY 

octave  and  sestet  for  the  embodiment  of  intellectual 
substance  incapable  of  that  partial  disintegration 
which  Petrarch  himself  always  or  mostly  sought, 
invented  a  species  of  sonnet  which  is  English  in 
impetus,  but  Italian,  or  partly  Italian,  in  structure. 
But  these  innovations  are  for  the  Miltons  of  our 
literature,  not  for  the  apprentices  of  the  craft.  We 
must  know  how  to  write  longhand  before  we  can 
write  shorthand;  we  must  know  the  axioms  before 
we  can  propound  original  geometric  theories.  Un 
til  he  has  demonstrated  his  ability  to  write  a  poem 
consisting  of  fourteen  iambic  pentameters  with  the 
rhyme  scheme  a,  b,  b,  a,  a,  b,  b,  a,  c,  d,  c,  d,  the 
maker  of  verses  should  not  experiment  with  any 
variations  of  the  established  form. 


[221] 


GILBERT   K.   CHESTERTON   AND   HIS 
POETRY 


ILBERT  K.  CHESTERTON  is  an  essay- 
t,  a  novelist,  a  dramatist,  a  debater  and  a 
poet.  But  many  people  —  his  brother,  Cecil  Chester 
ton,  did  for  instance  —  believe  that  he  is  first  of  all  a 
poet.  And  certainly  it  is  in  his  poetry  that  his  char 
acteristic  style  is  most  easily  recognized  and  defined. 

Mr.  Chesterton  and  the  late  Henry  James  are 
not  very  often  thought  of  as  intellectual  or  spiritual 
brothers.  And  yet  there  is  a  startlingly  obvious 
resemblance  between  these  two  writers.  Both  are 
stylists  ;  both  have  thoroughly  mastered  certain  pe 
culiar  methods  of  speech,  and  both  are,  it  must  be 
confessed,  hampered  by  their  undeviating  loyalty 
to  these  methods. 

This  is  not  the  place  to  analyze  the  style  of  Mr. 
James.  It  is  sufficient  to  recall  to  the  reader's  mind 
the  fact  that  the  author  of  "The  Golden  Bowl"  was 
not  concerned  so  much  with  the  presentation  of  ex 
traordinary  ideas  as  with  the  extraordinary  presen 
tation  of  ordinary  ideas.  And  the  extraordinari- 
[222] 


CHESTERTON  AND  HIS  POETRY 

ness  of  his  presentation  consisted  in  its  thorough 
ness  ;  he  was  not  content  to  suggest  the  thing  or  to 
show  one  aspect  of  it;  he  was  able,  and  seemed  to 
feel  a  certain  moral  obligation,  to  present  every  as 
pect  of  the  thing,  to  give  all  its  dimensions,  charac 
teristics,  origins  and  possibilities.  His  method  may 
roughly  be  indicated  by  saying  that  it  is  the  oppo 
site  of  impressionism. 

Gilbert  K.  Chesterton's  method,  which  is  more 
readily  observed  and  defined  in  his  poetry  than  in 
his  prose,  also  consists  chiefly  of  the  extraordinary 
presentation  of  ordinary  ideas.  But  he  does  not  at 
tempt  to  give  every  aspect  and  shading  of  an  idea. 
Rather  he  attempts  to  present  that  aspect  of  an 
idea  which,  while  true,  is  sufficiently  unusual  to  sur 
prise  the  reader ;  the  theory  being  that  the  attention 
attracted  by  the  unusualness  will  be  held  by  the 
truth. 

This  method  is  admirably  suited  to  the  uses  of 
fiction,  as  "The  Ball  and  the  Cross"  and  "The  Man 
Who  Was  Thursday"  show.  It  is  effective  in  de 
bate,  and  in  controversial  essays  on  matters  ethical 
and  political,  as  is  shown  by  the  writings  of  Mr. 
Chesterton  himself  and  of  that  school  of  popular 
apologetics  which  he  may  be  said  to  have  founded. 
In  poetry  it  is  sometimes  almost  magically  effective, 

[223] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

and  sometimes  grotesquely  inappropriate.  The 
perfect,  and  most  lamentable,  example  of  the  use  of 
this  method  is  to  be  found  in  a  poem  called  "E.  C. 
B."  These  initials  evidently  are  those  of  Ches 
terton's  friend,  Edmund  Clerihew  Bentley,  the 
writer  of  detective  stories. 

In  this  serious  and,  for  the  most  part,  beautiful 
poem,  Mr.  Chesterton  tells  us  that  because  of  the 
virtue  of  one  man  he  finds  something  to  love  in 
every  man.  Bentley  is  a  man,  he  says,  therefore, 
for  Bentley's  sake  no  man  is  to  be  hated.  For  the 
sake  of  Bentley's  humanity,  Chesterton  says  that 
he  loves  everyone,  the  murderer,  the  hypocrite, 
even — and  this  is  the  great  climax — himself. 

I  should  say,  this  was  to  be  his  great  climax.  But 
the  method  seizes  him,  and  keeps  him  from  saying 
anything  so  strongly  simple  as  "I  love  myself." 
Instead,  he  says: 

I  love  the  man  I  saw  but  now 

Hanging  head  downwards  in  the  well. 

This  is,  as  I  said,  the  Chestertonian  method  at  its 
worst.  Here  you  find  the  poet  absolutely  at  the 
mercy  of  his  method,  made  to  say  a  simple  thing  in 
a  complicated  manner.  But  this  is,  it  is  only  fair  to 
say,  an  early  poem,  and  not  fairly  representative  of 
[224] 


CHESTERTON  AND  HIS  POETRY 

Chesterton  as  a  poet.  For  it  is  pleasant  to  see  that, 
unlike  Henry  James,  Chesterton  has  been  steadily 
mastering  his  style,  mastering  it  so  thoroughly  that 
he  can  lay  it  aside  when  it  is  inappropriate.  He 
lays  it  aside,  for  instance,  in  some  of  the  passionate 
and  most  effective  chapters  of  "The  Crimes  of 
England."  And  he  lays  it  aside  in  such  of  his  writ 
ings  as  best  deserve  the  name  of  poetry. 

Like  every  poet  however  original,  Chesterton  has 
"played  the  sedulous  ape  to  many  masters."  In 
his  stirring  ballads  of  warfare,  such  as  "The  Battle 
of  Gibson"  and  "Lepanto"  I  find  echoes  of  the  last 
of  the  great  ballad  makers,  Macaulay,  whom 
Francis  Thompson  himself  did  not  disdain  to  imi 
tate.  In  his  political  controversial  poems  I  find 
strong  suggestions  of  a  poet  whose  point  of  view 
Chesterton  is  far  from  sharing — Rudyard  Kipling. 
I  find  also  a  curious  suggestion  of  Elizabeth  Bar 
rett  Browning.  Mrs.  Browning  was  Evangelical 
where  Chesterton  is  Catholic  in  thought,  and  she 
had  a  fatal  knack  of  taking  the  wrong  point  of  view 
in  political  matters — Italian  affairs,  for  example. 
But  she  was  genuinely  a  democrat  and  genuinely 
religious,  and  it  is  strange  to  see  how  often  she 
and  Chesterton  think  alike.  There  is  even  a  sim 
ilarity  of  phraseology,  as  when  Chesterton  writes: 

[225] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

The  Christ  Child  lay  on  Mary's  lap. 

His  hair  was  like  a  crown. 
And  all  the  flowers  looked  up  to  Him, 

And  all  the  stars  looked  down. 

whereas  many  years  before  Elizabeth  Barrett 
Browning  in  her  poem  "The  Doves"  had  written 
of  a  palm  tree : 

The  tropic  flowers  looked  up  to  it, 
The  tropic  stars  looked  down. 

Walt  Whitman  and  Gilbert  K.  Chesterton  seem 
a  strange  combination.  But  Chesterton  himself  has 
acknowledged  that  he  found  in  "Leaves  of  Grass" 
a  great  and  wholesome  inspiration.  This  seems 
strange  to  us,  for  the  American  Whitmanite  or 
Whitmaniac  is  a  pale  long-haired  creature  of  many 
'isms,  directly  the  opposite  of  a  robust  Christian 
like  Chesterton.  But  in  the  eighteen-nineties  when 
"science  announced  nonentity  and  art  admired  de 
cay"  Walt  Whitman's  "barbaric  yawp  sounding 
over  the  roofs  of  the  world"  seemed  a  healthy  sound. 
So  in  his  dedication  to  "The  Man  Who  Was  Thurs 
day,"  Chesterton  writes: 

Not  all  unhelped  we  held  the  fort,  our  tiny  flags 

unfurled ; 
[226] 


CHESTERTON  AND  HIS  POETRY 

Some  giants  laboured  in  that  crowd  to  lift  it  from 

the  world. 
I  find  again  the  book  we  found,  I  feel  the  hour  that 

flings 
Far  out  of  fish-shaped  Paumanok  some  cry  of 

cleaner  things; 
And  the  Green  Carnation  withered,  as  in  forest 

fires  that  pass, 
Roared  in  the  wind  of  all  the  world  ten  million 

leaves  of  grass; 
Or  sane  and  sweet  and  sudden  as  a  bird  sings  in 

the  rain — 
Truth  out  of  Tusitala  spoke  and  pleasure  out  of 

pain. 
Yea,  cool  and  clear  and  sudden  as  a  bird  sings  in 

the  grey, 

Dunedin  to  Samoa  spoke,  and  darkness  unto  day. 
But  we  were  young;  we  lived  to  see  God  break  the 

bitter  charms, 
God  and  the  good  Republic  come  riding  back  in 

arms: 
We  have  seen  the  city  of  Mansoul,  even  as  it  rocked, 

relieved — 
Blessed  are  they  who  did  not  see,  but  being  blind, 

believed. 

For  some  reason,  it  is  difficult  to  think  of  Ches 
terton  in  love.  We  can  readily  think  of  him  fight 
ing  or  praying,  but  to  think  of  him  making  love  re- 

[227] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

quires  an  effort  of  the  imagination.  Yet  he  is  hap 
pily  married,  and  while  his  love  poems  are  few,  they 
are  noble  in  thought  and  beautiful  in  expression. 
One  of  the  most  personal  and  characteristic  of  them 
is  that  to  which  he  gives  the  name  "Confessional." 

CONFESSIONAL 

Now  that  I  kneel  at  the  throne,  O  Queen, 

Pity  and  pardon  me. 

Much  have  I  striven  to  sing  the  same, 

Brother  of  beast  and  tree ; 

Yet  when  the  stars  catch  me  alone 

Never  a  linnet  sings — 

And  the  blood  of  a  man  is  a  bitter  voice 

And  cries  for  foolish  things. 

Not  for  me  be  the  vaunt  of  woe; 

Was  not  I  from  a  boy 

Vowed  with  the  helmet  and  spear  and  spur 

To  the  blood-red  banner  of  joy? 

A  man  may  sing  his  psalms  to  a  stone, 

Pour  his  blood  for  a  weed, 

But  the  tears  of  a  man  are  a  sudden  thing, 

And  come  not  of  his  creed. 

Nay,  but  the  earth  is  kind  to  me, 
Though  I  cried  for  a  star, 
Leaves  and  grasses,  feather  and  flower, 
Cover  the  foolish  scar, 
[228] 


CHESTERTON  AND  HIS  POETRY 

Prophets  and  saints  and  seraphim 
Lighten  the  load  with  song, 
And  the  heart  of  a  man  is  a  heavy  load 
For  a  man  to  bear  along. 

Many  poets  are  writing  of  war  these  days.  But 
they  write  of  war  too  self-consciously,  they  are  too 
sophisticated,  too  grown-up.  They  are  so  busy  get 
ting  lessons  from  the  war,  describing  its  moral  and 
social  significance,  that  they  have  nothing  to  say 
about  the  actual  facts  of  battle.  But  Chesterton's 
war  poems  are  splendid  primitive  things,  full  of  the 
thunder  of  crashing  arms,  of  courage  and  of  faith. 
I  think  that  his  "Lepanto"  is  without  an  equal 
among  the  war  poems  of  the  century.  It  begins  as 
follows: 

LEPANTO 

White  founts  falling  in  the  Courts  of  the  sun, 
And  the  Soldan  of  Byzantium  is  smiling  as  they 

run; 
There  is  laughter  like  the  fountains  in  that  face  of 

all  men  feared, 
It  stirs  the  forest  darkness,  the  darkness  of  his 

beard, 
It  curls  the  blood-red  crescent,  the  crescent  of  his 

lips, 
For  the  inmost  sea  of  all  the  earth  is  shaken  with  his 

ships. 

[229] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

They  have  dared  the  white  republics  up  the  capes 

of  Italy, 
They  have  dashed  the  Adriatic  round  the  Lion  of 

the  Sea, 
And  the  Pope  has  cast  his  arms  abroad  for  agony 

and  loss, 
And  called  the  kings  of  Christendom  for  swords 

about  the  Cross. 

The  cold  queen  of  England  is  looking  in  the  glass ; 
The  shadow  of  the  Valois  is  yawning  at  the  Mass ; 
From  evening  isles  fantastical  rings  faint  the  Span 
ish  gun, 
And  the  Lord  upon  the  Golden  Horn  is  laughing  in 

the  sun. 

Dim  drums  throbbing,  in  the  hills  half  heard, 
^Where  only  on  a  nameless  throne  a  crownless  prince 

has  stirred, 
Where,  from  a  doubtful  seat  and  half  attainted 

stall, 
The  last  knight  of  Europe  takes  weapons  from  the 

wall, 
The  last  and  lingering  troubadour  to  whom  the  bird 

has  sung, 
That  once  went  singing  southward  when  all  the 

world  was  young. 

In  that  enormous  silence,  tiny  and  unafraid, 
Comes  up  along  a  winding  road  the  noise  of  the 

Crusade. 

Strong  gongs  groaning  as  the  guns  boom  far, 
Don  John  of  Austria  is  going  to  the  war, 
[230] 


CHESTERTON  AND  HIS  POETRY 

Stiff  flags  straining  in  the  night-blasts  cold 
In  the  gloom  black-purple,  in  the  glint  old-gold, 
Torchlight  crimson  on  the  copper  kettle-drums, 
Then  the  tuckets,  then  the  trumpets,  then  the  can 
non,  and  he  comes. 

Don  John  laughing  in  the  brave  beard  curies, 
Spurning  of  his  stirrups  like  the  thrones  of  all  the 

world, 

Holding  his  head  up  for  a  flag  of  all  the  free. 
Love-light  of  Spain — hurrah! 
Death-light  of  Africa! 
Don  John  of  Austria 
Is  riding  to  the  sea. 

Mahound  is  in  his  paradise  above  the  evening  star, 
(Don  John  of  Austria  is  going  to  the  war) . 
He  moves  a  mighty  turban  on  the  timeless  houri's 

knees, 
His  turban  that  is  woven  of  the  sunsets  and  the 

seas. 
He  shakes  the  peacock  gardens  as  he  rises  from  his 

ease, 
And  he  strides  among  the  tree-tops  and  is  taller 

than  the  trees, 
And  his  voice  through  all  the  garden  is  a  thunder 

sent  to  bring 

Black  Azrael  and  Ariel  and  Ammon  on  the  wing. 
Giants  and  the  Genii, 
Multiplex  of  wing  and  eye, 
Whose  strong  obedience  broke  the  sky 
When  Solomon  was  king. 

[281] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

If  any  living  poet  deserves  to  be  called  the  lau 
reate  of  democracy,  that  poet  is  Gilbert  K.  Chester 
ton.  I  do  not  base  this  statement  so  much  on  his 
serious  poems  in  praise  of  democracy,  as  on  his 
light  verse.  In  his  gay  ballades,  full  of  rollicking 
humor,  we  find  every  now  and  then  a  bit  of  shrewd 
satire,  a  devastating  criticism  of  the  false  leaders,  of 
the  hypocrites  and  tyrants  who  sit  in  high  places. 
Better  than  any  other  writer  of  our  day,  Chester 
ton  knows  how  to  drive  his  rapier  of  rhyme  to  the 
very  heart  of  hypocrisy  and  injustice.  There  is 
sound  social  and  moral  criticism  back  of  the  irresis 
tible  nonsense  of  "A  Ballade  of  Suicide": 

A  BALLADE  OF  SUICIDE 

The  gallows  in  my  garden,  people  say, 

Is  new  and  neat  and  adequately  tall. 

I  tie  the  noose  on  in  a  knowing  way 

As  one  that  knots  his  necktie  for  a  ball; 

But  just  as  all  the  neighbours — on  the  wall — 

Are  drawing  a  long  breath  to  shout  "Hurray!" 

The  strangest  whim  has  seized  me.  .  .  .  After  all 

I  think  I  will  not  hang  myself  to-day. 

To-morrow  is  the  time  I  get  my  pay — 
My  uncle's  sword  is  hanging  in  the  hall — 
I  see  a  little  cloud  all  pink  and  grey — 
Perhaps  the  rector's  mother  will  not  call — 
[232] 


CHESTERTON  AND  HIS  POETRY 

I  fancy  that  I  heard  from  Mr.  Gall 

That  mushrooms  could  be  cooked  another  way — 

I  never  read  the  works  of  Juvenal — 

I  think  I  will  not  hang  myself  to-day. 

The  world  will  have  another  washing  day; 

The  decadents  decay;  the  pedants  pall; 

And  H.  G.  Wells  has  found  that  children  play, 

And  Bernard  Shaw  discovered  that  they  squall; 

Rationalists  are  growing  rational — 

And  through  thick  woods  one  finds  a  stream  astray, 

So  secret  that  the  very  sky  seems  small — 

I  think  I  will  not  hang  myself  to-day. 

envoi 

Prince,  I  can  hear  the  trumpet  of  Germinal, 
The  tumbrils  toiling  up  the  terrible  way; 
Even  to-day  your  royal  head  may  fall — 
I  think  I  will  not  hang  myself  to-day. 

But  the  poems  which  most  thoroughly  justify 
their  author's  claim  to  the  title  of  poet  are  the  re 
ligious  poems,  such  poems  as  "The  House  of 
Christmas,"  "A  Hymn  for  the  Church  Militant," 
"The  Nativity"  and  "The  Wise  Men."  In  the  last- 
named  poem  we  find  Chesterton's  love  of  de 
mocracy  and  his  hatred  of  pretentious  scientific  dog 
matism  fully  expressed,  and  we  find  also  the  thing 

[233] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

which  is  the  basis  of  these  ideas — his  deep  and  abid 
ing  faith.    He  writes: 

THE  WISE  MEN 

Step  softly,  under  snow  or  rain, 

To  find  the  place  where  men  can  pray; 

The  way  is  all  so  very  plain 
That  we  may  lose  the  way. 

Oh,  we  have  learnt  to  peer  and  pore 

On  tortured  puzzles  from  our  youth, 
We  know  all  labyrinthine  lore, 
We  are  the  three  wise  men  of  yore, 
And  we  know  all  things  but  the  truth. 

We  have  gone  round  and  round  the  hill, 

And  lost  the  wood  among  the  trees, 
And  learnt  long  names  for  every  ill, 
And  served  the  mad  gods,  naming  still 
The  Furies  the  Eumenides. 

The  gods  of  violence  took  the  veil 

Of  vision  and  philosophy, 
The  Serpent  that  brought  all  men  bale, 
He  bites  his  own  accursed  tail, 

And  calls  himself  Eternity. 

Go  humbly  ...  it  has  hailed  and  snowed  .  . 
With  voices  low  and  lanterns  lit; 


CHESTERTON  AND  HIS  POETRY 

So  very  simple  is  the  road, 
That  we  may  stray  from  it. 

The  world  grows  terrible  and  white, 

And  blinding  white  the  breaking  day; 
We  walk  bewildered  in  the  light, 
For  something  is  too  large  for  sight, 
And  something  much  too  plain  to  say. 

The  Child  that  was  ere  worlds  begun 

(.  .  .  We  need  but  walk  a  little  way, 
We  need  but  see  a  latch  undone  .  .  .) 
The  Child  that  played  with  moon  and  sun 
Is  playing  with  a  little  hay. 

The  house  from  which  the  heavens  are  fed, 
The  old  strange  house  that  is  our  own, 

Where  tricks  of  words  are  never  said, 

And  Mercy  is  as  plain  as  bread, 
And  Honour  is  as  hard  as  stone. 

Go  humbly;  humble  are  the  skies, 

And  low  and  large  and  fierce  the  Star; 

So  very  near  the  Manger  lies 
That  we  may  travel  far. 

Hark!    Laughter  like  a  lion  wakes 
To  roar  to  the  resounding  plain, 

And  the  whole  heaven  shouts  and  shakes, 
For  God  Himself  is  born  again, 

[285] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

And  we  are  little  children  walking 
Through  the  snow  and  rain. 

This  is  indeed  the  beautiful  expression  of  a 
beautiful  impression;  it  has  in  every  line  the  un 
mistakable  glow  of  noble  poetry;  it  is  musical,  im 
aginative,  direct,  and  it  is  passionately  Christian. 
It  is  the  sort  of  thing  which  makes  it  easy  to  under 
stand  why  many  people,  including,  it  is  said,  Mrs. 
Chesterton,  believe  that  this  great  humorist,  this 
formidable  debater,  this  brilliant  novelist,  this  sound 
critic,  this  accomplished  essayist,  is,  before  and 
above  all  other  things,  a  poet. 


[236] 


LIONEL  JOHNSON,  ERNEST  DOWSON, 
AUBREY  BEARDSLEY 

I"N  considering  that  brief  nnd  tumultuous  period 
-*•  in  English  literature  which  is  sometimes  called 
The  Esthetic  Renaissance,  it  is  inevitable  that 
three  figures  should  stand  out  with  particular  vivid 
ness.  They  are  Lionel  Johnson,  Aubrey  Beards- 
ley  and  Ernest  Dowson — a  great  poet,  a  brilliant, 
but  unbalanced  illustrator,  and  another  poet,  who 
wrote  a  great  deal  of  rubbish  and  about  four  poems 
which  are  genuine  and  important  contributions  to 
English  literature.  What  is  the  bond  between 
these  men  ?  Why  should  they  be  grouped  together  ? 
They  might  be  grouped  together  because  they  all 
three  were  creative  artists  whose  careers,  so  far  as 
the  world  knows,  ended  with  the  nineteenth  cen 
tury.  They  might  be  grouped  together  because 
they  were  animated  by  the  same  feeling,  a  violent 
reaction  against  the  hideous  scientific  dogmatism, 
the  deadly  materialism  of  the  much  vaunted  Vic 
torian  era.  And  they  might  be  grouped  together 
because  all  three  were  artists,  seekers  after  that  real 

[237] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

but  elusive  thing  called  beauty,  a  thing  which  they 
found  at  last  when  they  had  made  their  submis 
sion  to  her  who  is  the  mother  of  all  learning,  all 
culture  and  all  the  arts,  the  Catholic  Church. 

And  yet,  although  the  fact  that  their  conversion 
establishes  a  real  and  noble  connection  between 
these  three  men  of  genius,  their  characters  and  tal 
ents  differ  greatly.  Only  one  of  them — and  that 
one  Lionel  Johnson — was  directly  inspired  through 
a  considerable  period  of  years  by  his  Catholic  Faith. 
Ernest  Dowson,  the  poet,  and  Aubrey  Beardsley, 
the  artist,  became  Catholics  towards  the  end  of  their 
artistic  careers,  too  late  for  the  Faith  to  give  to 
their  work  that  purity  and  strength  which  are  the 
guarantees  of  immortality.  But  Lionel  Johnson 
found  his  Faith  almost  as  soon  as  he  found  his 
genius,  celebrated  it  in  poems  of  enduring  beauty, 
and  left  the  world  a  precious  heritage  of  song. 

In  his  book  "The  Eighteen-Nineties,"  Mr.  Hoi- 
brook  Jackson  has  pointed  out  the  significance  of 
the  revival  of  sestheticism  which  took  place  in  the 
closing  years  of  the  nineteenth  century,  and  has 
shown  that  it  was  symptomatic  of  a  sort  of  idealistic 
revolt.  The  poets  and  artists  were  sick  of  the  dog 
matic  materialism  which  dominated  the  mind  of 
England.  Huxley  and  Darwin  seemed  to  have 
[238] 


JOHNSON,  DOWSON  AND  BEARDSLEY 

dragged  the  angels  out  of  Heaven,  even  to  have 
torn  down  Heaven  itself,  and  to  have  put  in  its 
place  nothing  save  a  dull  rational  and  inhuman 
scientific  theory.  Against  this  scientific  dogma 
tism  in  matters  intellectual  and  spiritual,  and 
against  a  sort  of  bleak  smugness  in  matters  moral 
and  social,  the  young  idealists  of  the  eighteen- 
nineties  rebelled.  Sometimes  the  thing  which  they 
advocated  was  cheap  and  tawdry  enough,  some 
times  it  was  base  and  vicious.  But  they  were  at 
any  rate  in  revolt — they  had  found  at  last  that  the 
religion  of  science  and  the  morality  of  merely 
human  convention  could  not  satisfy  their  hearts  and 
their  souls. 

And  there  was  another  phase  to  the  renaissance 
of  the  nineties — it  was  a  romantic  adventure.  These 
men  were  all  of  them  young  and  ardent.  If  there 
had  been  some  brave  and  noble  adventure  at  hand, 
they  would  have  undertaken  it  with  song  on  their 
lips  and  laughter  in  their  hearts.  They  longed  to  be 
in  the  daring  minority,  to  battle  for  lost  causes. 
Now,  this  tendency  by  itself,  this  ambition  lacking 
a  worthy  aim  is  a  dangerous  thing.  So  some  of 
these  young  men  fell  by  the  wayside,  but  others  saw 
before  them  the  great  and  immortal  adventure,  for 
sook  their  trivial  toys  and  poses  and  attitudes,  and 

[239] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

enlisted  in  the  shining  army  of  a  King  more  shame 
fully  ill-used  than  Charles  I,  more  powerful  than 
Charlemagne. 

For  Aubrey  Beardsley  I  have  the  greatest  sym 
pathy  and  admiration.  That  being  the  case,  let  me 
say  that  for  the  honor  of  his  memory  I  wish  that 
every  drawing  that  he  made,  every  one  of  those 
deftly-made  arrangements  in  black  and  white, 
might  be  destroyed.  It  seems  to  me  that  he  was  of 
all  the  men  of  the  eighteen-nineties  the  one  gen 
uine  decadent.  It  is  not  only  in  such  openly  vicious 
things  as  the  illustrations  to  Wilde's  "Salome"  that 
we  find  deliberate  immorality  in  intention  and  ex 
pression,  there  is  in  all  his  work,  however  simple 
and  even  noble  may  be  the  theme,  as  for  instance  his 
illustrations  to  Malory's  "Morte  D'Arthur,"  a  defi 
nite  and  unmistakable  perversity,  a  sure  sign  of 
physical,  mental  and  moral  sickness. 

Aubrey  Beardsley's  mental  and  moral  sickness 
at  first  showed  itself  only  in  a  contempt  for  the 
conventions  of  art  and  in  especial  for  the  conven 
tions  of  proportion  and  prospective.  It  has  some 
times  been  said  that  it  is  as  absurd  to  rebel  against 
the  moral  law  as  against  the  law  of  gravitation. 
The  first  revolt  of  a  consumptive  young  architec 
tural  draughtsman  with  an  extraordinary  talent  for 
[240] 


JOHNSON,  DOWSON  AND  BEARDSLEY 

line  was  against  natural  law — against  the  law  of 
proportion.  The  first  drawings  which  brought  him 
any  notoriety  were  extraordinary  for  two  things— 
their  admirable  draughtsmanship  and  their  deliber 
ate  eccentricities  of  proportion.  He  drew  nothing 
but  monsters — men  eight  feet  tall  with  microscopic 
heads,  women  with  arms  as  long  as  their  entire 
bodies.  The  revolt  against  the  moral  law  came 
later — the  selection  of  hideously  obscene  subjects, 
the  painful  obsession  with  sex.  Then  came  the  sick 
boy's  discoveries  that  after  all  beauty  was  no  more 
in  the  weird  ugliness  he  had  celebrated  than  it  was 
in  the  smug  conventions  of  sentimental  Victorian 
painting.  A  few  weeks  before  his  death  Aubrey 
Beardsley  found  the  immortal  abiding  place  of 
beauty.  Received  into  the  Church,  Aubrey 
Beardsley  repented  bitterly  his  misuse  of  his  tal 
ents,  and  plead  with  his  friends  to  destroy  all  his 
immoral  drawings,  of  which  he  was  now  thoroughly 
ashamed.  "Burn  all  my  bawdy  pictures,"  he  wrote 
— a  dying  prayer  which  his  pagan  friends  utterly 
disregarded.  He  had  striven  to  find  beauty  in  sin, 
and  he  knew  that  this  seeking  was  in  vain.  For  now 
he  had  found  beauty,  now  he  had  learned  to  see  in 
the  lamp  which  is  beauty  the  light  which  is  God. 
I  have  said  that  Aubrey  Beardsley  was  the  only 

[241] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

frue  decadent  of  all  the  literary  and  artistic  rebels 
of  the  eighteen-nineties.  Certainly  no  intelligent 
person  can  call  Ernest  Dowson  a  decadent.  It  is 
true  that  there  have  been  critics,  such  as  Mr.  Blakie 
Murdoch,  who  have  tried  to  throw  a  halo  of  wicked 
ness  over  this  unfortunate  young  poet,  to  make  him 
seem  to  be  a  sort  of  English  Paul  Verlaine.  But 
Victor  Plarr,  who  knew  him  intimately  for  many 
years,  has  told  us  that  except  for  the  tendency  to 
drink  too  much,  which  was  one  of  the  causes  of  his 
death,  Ernest  Dowson  was  a  simple,  wholesome 
young  man,  who  smoked  large  black  cigars  and  was 
fond  of  playing  practical  jokes  on  his  friends. 

Ernest  Dowson's  religious  poems  have  never 
seemed  to  me  to  be  particularly  convincing.  I  will 
read  you  one  of  the  best  of  them  and  then  tell  you 
why  it  does  not  seem  to  me  to  ring  true.  It  is  called 
"Nuns  of  the  Perpetual  Adoration." 

NUNS  OF  THE  PERPETUAL  ADORATION 
BY  ERNEST  DOWSON 

Calm,  sad,  secure;  behind  high  convent  walls, 
These  watch  the  sacred  lamp,  these  watch  and 
pray: 

And  it  is  one  with  them  when  evening  falls, 
And  one  with  them  the  cold  return  of  day. 

[242] 


JOHNSON,  DOWSON  AND  BEARDSLEY 

These  heed  not  time;  their  nights  and  days  they 
make 

Into  a  long,  returning  rosary, 
TVhereon  their  lives  are  threaded  for  Christ's  sake : 

Meekness  and  vigilance  and  chastity. 

A  vowed  patrol,  in  silent  companies, 

Life-long  they  keep  before  the  living  Christ. 

In  the  dim  church,  their  prayers  and  penances 
Are  fragrant  incense  to  the  Sacrificed. 

Outside,  the  world  is  wild  and  passionate ; 

Man's  weary  laughter  and  his  sick  despair 
Entreat  at  their  impenetrable  gate: 

They  heed  no  voices  in  their  dream  of  prayer. 

They  saw  the  glory  of  the  world  displayed ; 

They  saw  the  bitter  of  it,  and  the  sweet ; 
They  knew  the  roses  of  the  world  would  fade, 

And  be  trod  under  by  the  hurrying  feet. 

Therefore  they  rather  put  away  desire, 

And  crossed  their  hands  and  came  to  sanctuary ; 

And  veiled  their  heads  and  put  on  coarse  attire: 
Because  their  comeliness  was  vanity. 

And  there  they  rest;  they  have  serene  insight 

Of  the  illuminating  dawn  to  be: 
Mary's  sweet  Star  dispels  for  them  the  night, 

The  proper  darkness  of  humanity. 

[243] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

Calm,  sad,  secure;  with  faces  worn  and  mild: 
Surely  their  choice  of  vigil  is  the  best? 

Yea!  for  our  roses  fade,  the  world  is  wild; 
But  there,  beside  the  altar,  there,  is  rest. 

Now,  this  is  a  very  beautiful  poem.  But  there  is 
nothing  in  it  which  might  not  have  been  written  by 
a  Protestant.  And  there  is  one  note  in  it  which 
seems  to  me  to  be  absolutely  contrary  to  the  Catho 
lic  idea  of  the  religious  life — and  that  is  the  note  of 
melancholy.  Ernest  Dowson  insists  that  the  nuns 
are  sad  as  well  as  calm  and  secure,  he  insists  upon 
the  fact  that  their  faces  are  "worn  and  mild."  Also 
he  apparently  thinks  of  the  convent  as  a  place  of 
inaction,  instead  of  as  a  place  of  ordered  and  ener 
getic  activity.  Therefore,  this  poem,  beautiful  as 
it  is,  seems  to  me  to  be  in  no  way  Catholic  in  spirit 
or  in  expression. 

But  while  I  do  not  feel  that  the  authenticity  of 
Ernest  Dowson's  Catholicity  can  be  proved  by  his 
deliberately  religious  poems,  I  do  think  that  in 
nearly  every  poem  which  this  so-called  decadent 
wrote  it  is  possible  to  find  indications  if  not  of  piety, 
at  least  of  normality,  sanity,  wholesomeness  and 
virtue. 

There  are,  and  there  have  always  been  since  sin 
first  came  into  the  world,  genuine  decadents.  That 
[244] 


JOHNSON,  DOWSON  AND  BEARDSLEY 

is,  there  have  been  writers  who  have  devoted  all 
their  energies  and  talents  to  the  cause  of  evil,  who 
have  consistently  and  sincerely  opposed  Christian 
morality,  and  zealously  endeavored  to  make  the 
worst  appear  the  better  cause.  But  every  poet  who 
lays  a  lyric  wreath  at  a  heathen  shrine,  who  sings 
the  delights  of  immorality,  or  hashish,  or  suicide,  or 
mayhem,  is  not  a  decadent :  often  he  is  merely  weak- 
minded.  The  true  decadent,  to  paraphrase  a 
famous  saying,  wears  his  vices  lightly,  like  a  flower. 
He  really  succeeds  in  making  vice  seem  picturesque 
and  amusing  and  even  attractive. 

Now,  this  is  exactly  what  Ernest  Dowson  never 
could  do.  He  was  a  member,  it  will  be  remem 
bered,  of  that  little  band  of  aesthetic  poets  which 
was  called  The  Rhymers  Club.  With  them  he  spent 
certain  evenings  at  the  Cheshire  Cheese,  and  there 
he  drank  absinthe.  This  is  a  significant  and  sym 
bolic  fact.  Not  in  some  ominous 'Parisian  cellar, 
but  beneath  the  beamed  ceiling  of  a  most  British 
inn,  still  stained  with  smoke  from  the  pipe  of  Dr. 
Samuel  Johnson,  among  thick  mutton  chops  and 
tankards  of  musty  ale,  in  a  cloud  of  sweet-scented 
steam  that  rose  from  the  parted  crust  of  the  mag 
nificent  pigeon  pie,  Ernest  Dowson  drank  absinthe. 

There  is  splendid  symbolism  in  Ernest  Dowson's 

[245] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

act  of  drinking  absinthe  in  the  Cheshire  Cheese. 
The  wickedness  in  his  poems  and  his  prose  sketches 
is  always  as  affected  and  incongruous  as  is  that 
pallid  medicine  in  any  honest  tavern. 

He  tried  hard  to  be  pagan.  In  the  manner  of 
Mr.  Swinburne,  he  exclaims:  "Goddess  the  laugh 
ter-loving,  Aphrodite,  Aphrodite,  befriend!  Let 
me  have  peace  of  thee,  truce  of  thee,  golden  one, 
send!"  And  not  even  Mr.  Swinburne  ever  wrote 
lines  so  absolutely  unconvincing.  He  said  "I  go 
where  the  wind  blows,  Chloe,  and  am  not  sorry  at 
all."  And  from  this  lyric  no  one  can  fail  to  get  the 
impression  that  the  poet  was  very  sorry  indeed. 

Ernest  Dowson  was  an  accomplished  artist  in 
words,  a  delicate  sensitive  and  graceful  genius,  but 
he  was  no  more  fitted  to  be  a  pagan  than  to  be  a 
policeman.  And  so,  in  his  best  known  poems,  he 
uses  all  the  pagan  properties,  all  the  splendors  of 
sin's  pageantry,  but  his  theme,  his  overmastering 
thoughts,  is  a  soul-shaking  lament  for  his  stained 
faithfulness,  for  his  treason  to  the  Catholic  ideal  of 
chastity. 

Ernest  Dowson  could  not  write  poems  that  really 
were  pagan.  He  was  not  a  true  decadent.  And 
for  this  undoubtedly  he  now  is  thanking  God.  He 
had  his  foolish  hours :  he  sometimes  misused  his  gift 
[246] 


JOHNSON,  DOWSON  AND  BEARDSLEY 

of  song.  But — and  this  is  the  important  thing 
about  it — he  did  not  know  how  to  misuse  it  suc 
cessfully.  The  real  Ernest  Dowson  was  not  the 
picturesque  vagabond  about  whom  Mr.  Blackie 
Murdoch  has  written,  but  the  man  who  with  all  his 
heart  praised  "meekness  and  vigilance  and  chas 
tity,"  who  "was  faithful"  in  his  pathetic  ineffective 
fashion,  who  knew  at  last  the  fidelity  of  his  eternal 
Mother,  who,  in  Katherine  Bregy's  beautiful  words, 
"laid  his  broken  body  in  consecrated  ground  and 
followed  his  bruised  soul,  with  her  pitiful  asperging 
prayers." 

In  considering  the  eccentricities  of  "The  Savoy" 
and  "The  Yellow  Book,"  in  considering  all  the  liter 
ary  and  artistic  artificialities  of  the  eighteen-nine- 
ties,  it  seems  to  me  that  one  real  value  of  the  cult  of 
peacocks  and  green  carnations,  of  artificial  pagan 
ism  and  sophisticated  loveliness,  is  that  it  furnishes 
a  splendidly  contrasting  background  for  the  white 
genius  of  Lionel  Johnson. 

This  aristocratic  and  wealthy  young  Oxford 
graduate  might  so  easily  have  become  an  aesthete 
and  nothing  more!  His  environment,  many  of  his 
friendships,  even  his  discipleship,  as  it  may  be 
called,  to  Walter  Pater  might  naturally  be  ex 
pected  to  cause  him  to  develop  into  a  mere  dilet- 

[247] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

tante,  interested  only  in  delicate  and  superficial 
beauty,  having,  by  way  of  moral  code,  an  earnest 
desire  to  live  up  to  his  blue  chine. 

Instead,  what  was  Lionel  Johnson?  He  was  a 
sound  and  accomplished  scholar,  writing  Latin 
hymns  that  for  their  grace  and  authentic  ecclesias 
tical  style  might  stand  beside  those  of  Adam  of  St. 
Victor  or  of  St.  Bernard  himself.  Nor  was  he  less 
deft  in  his  manipulation  of  the  style  of  the  classical 
authors,  as  many  graceful  lines  show.  And  this, 
remember,  was  at  a  time  when  Latin  was  most  ab 
solutely  a  dead  language  to  most  young  English 
poets,  whose  attention  was  given  entirely  to  the  pic 
turesque  attractions  of  the  Parisian  argot  beloved 
of  the  decadents. 

The  aesthetic  movement  of  the  eighteen-nineties 
was  merely  a  search  for  beauty — merely  a  revolt 
against  Victorian  agnosticism  and  materialism. 
Johnson  found  the  adventure  which  all  the  young 
poets  and  artists  were  seeking;  he  knew  that  the 
only  answer  to  their  question  wTas  the  Catholic  Faith. 

The  atmosphere  of  the  literary  world  in  which 
he  lived  seems  to  have  had  no  effect  upon  Lionel 
Johnson's  mind  and  soul.  He  was  "of  the  centre" 
not  "of  the  movement."  He  gladly  accepted  the 
gracious  traditions  of  English  poetry.  He  fol- 
[248] 


JOHNSON,  DOWSON  AND  BEARDSLEY 

lowed  the  time-hallowed  conventions  of  his  craft  as 
faithfully  as  did  Tennyson.  He  had  no  desire  to 
toss  Milton's  wreath  either  to  Whitman  or  to 
Baudelaire. 

But  these  virtues  are  perhaps  chiefly  negative. 
Almost  the  same  thing  might  be  said  of  many 
poets,  of  the  late  Stephen  Phillips,  for  example, 
who  certainly  was  an  honest  traditionalist,  unin 
fluenced  by  decadence  or  sestheticism.  But  Lionel 
Johnson  had  also  (what  Stephen  Phillips  lacked)  a 
great  and  beautiful  philosophy.  And  his  philoso 
phy  was  true.  He  was  so  fortunate  as  to  hold  the 
Catholic  Faith.  This  Faith  inspired  his  best  poems, 
shines  through  them  and  makes  them,  as  the  word 
is  used,  immortal. 

While  Lionel  Johnson  was  not  exclusively  a  de 
votional  and  religious  poet,  the  theme  which  he  sang 
with  the  most  splendid  passion  and  the  most  con 
summate  art  was  the  Catholic  Church.  This  was 
the  great  influence  in  his  life;  it  is  to  this  that  his 
poetry  owes  most  of  its  enduring  beauty.  But 
there  were  other  influences,  there  were  other  things 
which  claimed,  to  a  less  degree,  his  devotion.  One 
of  these  is  Ireland. 

Lionel  Johnson's  chivalrous  loyalty  to  Ireland 
was  not  without  its  quaint  humor.  He  was  de- 

[249] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

scended  from  the  severe  and  brutal  general  who 
savagely  put  down  the  insurrection  of  1798.  But 
he  by  no  means  shared  his  ancestor's  views  in  Irish 
matters;  he  was  an  enthusiastic  advocate  of  Irish 
freedom  and  a  devoted  lover  of  everything  Irish. 
Although  he  hailed  with  delight  the  revival  of 
ancient  Celtic  customs  and  the  ancient  Celtic 
language,  Lionel  Johnson  was  far  from  being  what 
we  have  come  to  call  a  neo-Celt.  He  did  not  spend 
his  time  in  writing  elaborately  annotated  chants 
in  praise  of  Cuchulain  and  Deidre  and  Oengus,  and 
other  creatures  of  legend;  the  attempt  to  rees 
tablish  Ireland's  ancient  paganism  seemed  to  him 
singularly  unintelligent.  He  saw  that  the  greatest 
glory  of  Ireland  is  her  fidelity  to  the  Catholic  Faith, 
a  fidelity  which  countless  cruel  persecutions  have 
only  strengthened.  And  so  when  he  wrote  of  Ire 
land's  dead,  he  did  not  see  them  entering  into  some 
Ossianic  land  of  dead  warriors.  Instead  he  wrote: 

For  their  loyal  love,  nought  less, 
Than  the  stress  of  death  sufficed: 

Now  with  Christ,  in  blessedness, 
Triumph  they,  imparadised. 

Similarly,  in  what  is  generally  considered  to  be 
his  greatest  poem,  the  majestic  and  passionate  "Ire- 
[250] 


JOHNSON,  DOWSON  AND  BEARDSLEY 

land,"  his  most  joyous  vision  is  that  of  the  "Bright 
souls  of  Saints,  glad  choirs  of  intercession  from  the 
Gael,"  and  he  concludes  with  this  splendid  prayer: 

O  Rose!  O  Lily!  O  Lady  full  of  grace! 

O  Mary  Mother !  O  Mary  Maid !  hear  thou. 
Glory  of  Angels!  Pity,  and  turn  they  face, 

Praying  thy  Son,  even  as  we  pray  thee  now, 
For  thy  dear  sake  to  set  thine  Ireland  free: 

Pray  thou  thy  Little  Child! 
Ah!  who  can  help  her,  but  in  mercy  He? 

Pray  then,  pray  thou  for  Ireland,  Mother  mild! 
O  heart  of  Mary!  Pray  the  Sacred  Heart: 
His,  at  Whose  word  depart 

Sorrows  and  hates,  home  to  Hell's  waste  and 
wild. 

Lionel  Johnson  was,  as  Miss  Louise  Imogen 
Guiney  has  written,  "a  tower  of  wholesomeness  in 
the  decadence  which  his  short  life  spanned."  His 
purely  secular  poems  are  best  when  his  Catholic 
Faith,  seemingly  without  his  willing  it,  unexpected 
ly  shines  out  in  a  splendor  of  radiant  phrases. 
And  of  all  his  poems,  those  which  constitute  his 
most  important  contributions  to  literature,  are 
those  which  are  directly  the  fruit  of  his  religious  ex 
periences  or  of  his  love  for  Ireland.  He  was  not  so 
great  a  poet  as  Francis  Thompson.  He  never 

[251] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

wrote  a  poem  that  will  stand  comparison  with  "The 
Hound  of  Heaven"  or  the  "Orient  Ode."  But  the 
sum  of  the  beauty  in  all  his  work  is  great,  and  his 
poetry  is,  on  the  whole,  more  companionable  than 
that  of  Francis  Thompson ;  it  is  more  human,  more 
personal,  more  intimate. 

And  to  at  least  two  of  Lionel  Johnson's  poems, 
the  adjective  "great"  may,  by  every  sound  critical 
standard,  safely  be  applied.  One  of  these  is  the 
"Dark  Angel,"  a  masterly  study  of  the  psychology 
of  temptation,  written  in  stanzas  that  glow  with 
feeling,  that  are  the  direct  and  passionate  utter 
ance  of  the  poet's  soul,  and  yet  are  as  polished  and 
accurate  as  if  their  author's  only  purpose  had  been 
to  make  a  thing  of  beauty.  The  other  is  "Te 
Martyrum  Candidatus,"  a  poem  which  may  with 
out  question  be  given  its  place  in  any  anthology 
which  contains  "Burning  Babe,"  "The  Kings,"  and 
Crashaw's  "Hymn  to  St.  Teresa."  It  has  seemed 
to  me  that  these  brave  and  beautiful  lines,  which 
have  for  their  inspiration  the  love  of  God,  and  echo 
with  their  chiming  syllables  the  hoof -beats  of  horses 
bearing  knights  to  God's  battles,  might  serve  as  a 
fitting  epitaph  for  the  accomplished  scholar,  the 
true  poet,  the  noble  and  kindly  Catholic  gentleman 
who  wrote  them. 
[252] 


SWINBURNE  AND  FRANCIS 
THOMPSON 

I  FEEL  a  certain  diffidence  in  approaching  the 
subject  of  Francis  Thompson  before  such  an 
audience  as  this.  For  I  know  that  there  are  many 
among  you  who  could  teach  me  much  about  that 
great  poet,  the  modern  laureate  of  the  Catholic 
Church.  I  suppose  that  many  of  you  have  studied 
the  profound  philosophy  of  "From  the  Night  of 
Forebeing,"  "The  Mistress  of  Vision"  and  "The 
Hound  of  Heaven,"  have  curiously  examined  the 
beautiful  verbal  intricacies  of  "Sister  Songs"  and 
"The  Orient  Ode,"  and  are  familiar  with  the  tri 
umphs  and  the  tragedies  of  Francis  Thompson's 
brief  life. 

But  there  may  be  some  among  you  to  whom 
Francis  Thompson  is  little  more  than  a  name.  To 
such  let  me  say  that  Francis  Thompson  was  born 
of  Catholic  parents  in  Lancashire,  England,  in 
1859,  that  he  died,  fortified  by  the  last  rites  of  the 
Church  he  loved,  at  the  age  of  forty-eight,  that 
most  of  his  life  was  spent  in  poverty  and  ill-health, 

[253] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

that  he  was  subject  to  terrible  and  persistent  temp 
tations,  but  remained  faithful  to  the  Church,  and 
made  in  the  Church's  honor  some  of  the  greatest 
poems  in  the  English  language.  I  compare  him  to 
a  contemporary  poet,  Algernon  Charles  Swin 
burne,  chiefly  because  Swinburne  was  the  poet  of 
Paganism  as  Francis  Thompson  was  the  poet  of 
Catholicity,  because  their  careers  present  interest 
ing  resemblances  as  well  as  interesting  contrasts, 
and  because  both  are  what  is  called  "Victorian" 
poets. 

Now,  in  this  connection  let  me  ask  you  if  you  ever 
seriously  considered  the  advantages  of  living  in  a 
Republic,  of  living,  for  example,  in  the  United 
States  of  America  instead  of  in  England?  There 
is,  for  example,  the  recurrent  excitement  of  chang 
ing  the  president  once  every  four  years,  of  having 
every  so  often  a  new  chief  executive  on  whom  to 
vent  your  enthusiastic  affection  or  your  enthusiastic 
loathing.  A  president  is  a  wonderful  safety-valve 
for  the  pent-up  feelings  of  a  nation.  The  suffrage, 
the  right  to  vote,  must  be  a  golden  privilege  in 
deed,  otherwise  so  many  members  of  the  wiser  sex 
would  not  pursue  it  with  such  zeal  and  devotion. 

But  the  advantage  of  living  in  a  Republic  to 
which  I  desire  particularly  to  call  your  attention 
£254] 


SWINBURNE  AND  THOMPSON 

this  afternoon  is  the  advantage  of  escaping  from 
the  custom  of  calling  periods  of  artistic  and  literary 
endeavor  after  the  sovereigns  who  happened  to  rule 
during  them.  You  never  hear  James  Whitcomb 
Riley  or  Edwin  Markham  spoken  of  as  Wilsonian 
poets.  But  you  do  hear  Ben  Jonson  called  an 
Elizabethan  poet,  which  is  just  as  absurd.  You 
never  hear  Bryant  and  Whittier  called  poets  of  the 
Lincoln  period.  But  you  do  hear  such  utterly  dis 
similar  poets  as  Algernon  Charles  Swinburne  and 
Francis  Thompson  spoken  of  as  Victorian  poets. 

Why  is  this  ?  Why  is  the  Elizabethan  era  ?  Why 
should  the  age  that  glowed  with  the  deathless 
flames  of  Shakespeare's  genius,  that  echoed  with 
Ben  Jonson's  lyric  laughter,  that  was  pierced  by 
the  poignant  music  of  Robert  Southwell,  the 
martyred  Jesuit  poet,  be  named  after  Elizabeth, 
the  persecutor  of  the  saints,  the  vain  and  selfish  and 
cruel  woman  who  then  occupied  England's  throne, 
to  England's  lasting  shame? 

And  why  are  we  to-day  considering,  in  Swin 
burne  and  Francis  Thompson,  two  Victorian  poets  ? 
Why  Victorian?  Of  course,  Queen  Victoria  was 
a  good  wife  and  mother,  a  noble  gentlewoman.  I 
think  that  we  all  like  everything  that  we  know 
about  Queen  Victoria  except  perhaps  her  politics. 

[255] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

But  why  should  the  name  of  this  estimable 
woman  be  used  to  designate  the  intellectual  and 
spiritual  life  of  the  time  during  which  she  ruled, 
a  life  from  which  she  was  as  remote  as  was  the 
Queen  of  Sheba?  Why  should  we  give  the  placid 
name  Victorian  to  that  time  of  violent  sin  and 
violent  virtue,  of  passionate  infidelity  and  passion 
ate  faith,  that  time  which  produced  the  Darwinian 
theory,  and  the  Oxford  Movement,  which  produced 
the  cruel  reign  of  dogmatic  science  and  the  Catholic 
renascence,  which  produced  the  poetry  of  Algernon 
Charles  Swinburne  and  the  poetry  of  Francis 
Thompson? 

The  combination  of  these  two  names  may  strike 
you  as  unusual.  You  know  that  Swinburne  was 
what  is  called  a  Pagan,  that  he  hated  all  forms  of 
Christianity  and  especially  the  Catholic  Church. 
You  know  also  that  Francis  Thompson  was  the 
Church's  poet-laureate,  the  greatest  Catholic  poet 
of  modern  times.  And  you  wonder  why  Swinburne 
and  Francis  Thompson  should  be  mentioned  in 
the  same  breath. 

Well,  great  as  are  the  differences  between  these 
poets,  the  resemblances  are  striking.  It  is  true  that 
when  Swinburne  was  at  the  height  of  his  fame, 
Francis  Thompson  was  running  errands  and  hold- 
[256] 


SWINBURNE  AND  THOMPSON 

ing  horses  in  the  London  streets,  his  genius  prac 
tically  unknown.  Yet  he  was  famous  before  Swin 
burne's  death,  and  there  are  other  points  of  contact 
beside  that  of  time  between  this  militant  pagan  and 
this  militant  Christian. 

In  the  first  place,  both  were  poets.  Both  had 
genuine  talent,  and  both  had  a  strong  desire  to  do 
the  work  of  the  poet,  that  is,  to  find  beauty  and  to 
bind  beauty  with  a  chain  of  linked  rhyme. 

Now  the  poet's  search  for  beauty  often  is  diffi 
cult,  and  it  was  especially  difficult  in  London  in  the 
latter  days  of  the  nineteenth  century.  All  the  poets 
were  seeking  for  beauty,  but  the  scientists  had  been 
industriously  trying  to  drive  beauty  out  of  the 
world.  Of  course,  they  had  not  succeeded,  any 
more  than  the  French  Atheist  succeeded  a  few 
years  ago  in  carrying  out  his  blasphemous  threat  of 
putting  out  that  light  in  the  heavens.  But  they  had 
thrown  a  veil  over  the  face  of  beauty,  and  made 
beauty  hard  to  see  except  for  those  who  looked  with 
the  strong  eyes  of  faith. 

How  the  poets  worried!  Where  had  beauty 
flown?  Browning  thought  that  beauty  was  in 
humanity.  So  he  searched  for  beauty  in  human 
ity,  and  in  his  search  made  many  interesting  and 
noble  poems.  Tennyson,  that  magnificent  artist  in 

[257] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

words,  thought  that  beauty  was  somewhere  in  evo 
lution.  And  he  at  last  descended  to  the  most  supine 
of  intellectual  attitudes,  his  philosophy  being  mere 
ly  that  somehow  good  would  be  the  final  goal  of  all, 
that  everything  would  come  out  all  right  in  the  end. 
And  he  uttered  the  most  absurd  statement  ever 
made  by  any  poet  in  the  history  of  the  world  when 
he  said  "There  lies  more  faith  in  honest  doubt,  be 
lieve  me,  than  in  half  the  creeds." 

All  the  poets  were  seeking  after  beauty.  When 
Swinburne,  full  of  Greek  and  Latin  and  talent  and 
conceit,  left  Oxford  University  to  begin  a  military 
career,  he  was  seeking  for  beauty.  And  when 
Francis  Thompson  was  selling  matches  and  shoe 
strings  in  the  London  gutters,  he  was  seeking  for 
beauty. 

Swinburne  knew  that  the  life  around  him  was 
dull  and  materialistic.  The  scientists  had  said  that 
the  old  ethical  and  spiritual  values  were  dead. 
There  could  be  no  beauty  in  religion,  for  the  scien 
tists  had  killed  religion,  putting  up  in  its  place  their 
own  artificial  dogma.  Beauty  and  light  had  gone 
out  of  life. 

So  Swinburne  decided,  logically  enough,  that 
since  beauty  was  not  in  his  own  land  and  age,  he 
must  seek  it  in  the  ages  that  had  gone  before.  So 
[258] 


SWINBURNE  AND  THOMPSON 

he  wrote  not  of  modern  scientific,  dull,  Victorian 
London,  but  of  ancient  Venice,  of  ancient  Rome, 
of  ancient  Greece.  He  lamented  the  departure  of 
Venus  and  Apollo  and  Dionysus  and  all  the  old 
gods  and  goddesses,  and  the  loss  of  the  glories  of 
the  spacious  classic  days. 

But  Swinburne  failed.  Musical  as  are  his  rhymes 
and  rhythms,  lofty  as  was  his  imagination,  he  failed. 
He  failed  to  write  convincingly  of  medieval  Rome 
and  ancient  Venice  because  he  could  not  understand 
what  made  these  cities  beautiful  and  great — their 
faith.  He  failed  to  write  convincingly  of  ancient 
Greece  because  he  could  never  be  that  rare  and  in 
its  way  splendid  thing,  an  honest  pagan. 

No  one  can  be  a  real  pagan  nowadays.  Swin 
burne  is  not  to  be  blamed  because  he  failed  to  be  a 
real  pagan,  but  because  he  tried  to  be  a  pagan. 
The  ancient  Greeks  who  lived  before  the  time  of 
Christ  were  brave  and  simple  men,  their  chief  vir 
tues  were  courage,  patriotism,  obedience  to  the  law, 
democracy  and  zeal  for  art.  These  virtues  were  in 
time  taken  over  and  multiplied  by  the  Catholic 
Church,  which  has  preserved  all  of  pagan  culture 
that  deserved  preservation.  Swinburne  rejected 
these  virtues,  probably  thinking  them  to  be  Chris 
tian  innovations,  and  the  pagans  of  whom  he  wrote 

[259] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

were  sensual,  decadent  things,  like  the  degenerate 
Greeks  who  lived  in  the  days  of  Roman  supremacy. 
And  Swinburne  finally  reached  his  true  level  in  the 
poem  in  which  he  speaks  by  the  mouth  of  Julian 
the  Apostate,  the  poor  maniac  who  rejected  Chris 
tianity  and  struggled  vainly  to  restore  the  worship 
of  the  legendary  gods  of  his  heathen  ancestors. 

Francis  Thompson,  like  Swinburne,  sought  for 
beauty.  And  Francis  Thompson  found  beauty. 
Francis  Thompson  found  beauty  because  he  knew 
where  to  look.  He  found  beauty  in  prosaic  scien 
tific  modern  London,  he  found  beauty  in  the  city 
streets.  He  found  beauty  right  around  the  corner, 
in  a  certain  little  Church  around  the  corner  which 
is  also  the  big  Church  around  the  world.  He  found 
beauty  where  she  is  and  always  will  be,  in  the 
Catholic  faith. 

Swinburne  felt  his  lack  of  faith.  He  bitterly  re 
sented  the  veil  that  his  infidelity  had  put  between 
himself  and  beauty.  And  therefore  he  attacked 
faith,  and  railed  with  all  the  venom  of  a  disap 
pointed  man  against  Christ,  his  Saints  and  His 
Church. 

Swinburne  longed  for  the  days  of  pagan  license 
and  revelry,  when  Pan  and  Apollo  dwelt  with  man. 
Francis  Thompson  knew  that  God  was  with  man, 
[260] 


SWINBURNE  AND  THOMPSON 

that  no  street  was  so  humble,  no  house  so  poor  as 
not  to  know  the  tread  of  His  feet.  Instead  of  long 
ing  for  a  return  of  the  old  imaginary  gods,  he  saw 
the  beauty  of  God  evident  in  such  harsh  thorough 
fares  as  Charing  Cross,  and  brooding  even  over 
the  muddy  waters  of  the  Thames.  He  wrote: 

THE  KINGDOM  OF  GOD 

The  angels  keep  their  ancient  places, 

Turn  but  a  stone  and  start  a  wing, 
'Tis  ye,  'tis  your  estranged  faces 

That  miss  the  many  splendoured  thing. 

But  when  so  sad  thou  canst  not  sadder 

Cry: — and  upon  thy  so  sore  loss 
Shall  shine  the  traffic  of  Jacob's  ladder 

Pitched  between  Heaven  and  Charing  Cross. 

Yea,  in  the  night,  my  Soul,  my  daughter, 
Cry, — clinging  Heaven  by  the  hems; 

And  lo,  Christ  walking  on  the  water 
Not  of  Gennesareth  but  Thames ! 

A  dangerous  test  of  a  poet's  genius  is  to  be  found 
in  his  attitude  towards  the  simplest  and  smallest 
things.  It  is  for  this  reason  that  any  poet  of  talent 
may  safely  write  about  a  mountain  or  a  waterfall 
or  a  sunset,  but  only  a  very  great  poet  should  ever 

[261] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

write  about  children.  The  poets  know  this,  and 
in  spite  of  his  paganism  and  sophistication  Swin 
burne  often  tried  to  prove  his  genius  by  making 
excursions  into  the  enchanted  land  of  childhood. 
He  wrote  one  poem  which  he  considered  a  very  im 
portant  achievement,  reprinting  it  in  many  edi 
tions  of  his  poetry.  And  in  that  poem  Swinburne 
did  accomplish  something  well  worthy  of  accom 
plishment,  he  expressed  an  interesting  and  beautiful 
idea.  Now  it  would  be  absurd  to  take  this  poem  of 
Swinburne's  and  compare  it  with  one  of  Francis 
Thompson's  masterpieces,  such  as  "The  Hound  of 
Heaven."  But  it  surely  is  fair  to  compare  it  to  a 
poem  by  Francis  Thompson  on  the  same  theme. 

You  must  consider  how  it  is  that  a  poet  writes  a 
poem.  There  are  said  to  be  poets  who  are  struck 
on  the  head  by  a  great  inspiration,  and  let  that  in 
spiration  trickle  down  through  the  shoulder  and 
arm  and  out  the  end  of  a  pen  upon  a  piece  of  paper. 
There  are  said  to  be  such  poets,  although  in  my 
rather  extensive  observation  of  poets  I  have  never 
met  one.  The  usual  method  is  for  a  poet  to  medi 
tate  on  a  subject,  to  set  down  on  paper  all  the  most 
beautiful  ideas  which  his  subject  suggests  to  him. 

Well,  let  us  imagine  Swinburne  confronted  by 
the  miracle  of  childhood.  Knowing  that  his  repu- 
[262] 


SWINBURNE  AND  THOMPSON 

tation  must  stand  or  fall  by  this  attempt,  he  en 
deavors  to  record  all  the  splendid  emotions  and 
noble  comparisons  which  childhood  suggests  to  him. 
And  what  is  the  result?  What  is  the  climax  of 
thought  in  his  poem?  The  climax  is  this:  Swin 
burne  says  that  the  baby  about  whom  he  is  writing, 
who  happens  to  be  wearing  a  plush  cap,  looks  like 
a  moss  rose  bud  in  its  soft  sheath. 

This  is  a  pleasant  idea.  Undoubtedly  it  pleased 
the  baby's  mother  and  the  baby  herself  when  she 
grew  up.  But  these  are  scarcely  the  words  that 
shall  tremble  on  the  lips  of  time. 

Francis  Thompson  was  great  enough  to  do  the 
obvious  thing.  When  he  was  drawing  inspiration 
from  the  miracle  of  childhood,  he  did  not  think 
about  plush  caps  and  moss  roses.  Instead,  he  did 
the  most  natural  and  the  most  beautiful  thing.  He 
thought  about  the  Infant  Jesus.  Childhood  to  him 
suggested  Him  Who  made  childhood  Divine.  And 
in  "Ex  Ore  Infantium"  he  gave  that  thought  im 
mortal  expression. 

But  in  comparing  the  plush  cap  of  the  baby  to  a 
moss  rose,  Swinburne  did  not  think  he  had  said  the 
last  word  on  the  subject.  As  the  result  of  pro 
longed  meditation  on  childhood,  he  produced 
another  poem  in  which  he  really  did  accomplish 

[263] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

something  remarkable.     He   found  a  rhyme  for 
"babe." 

Now,  I  doubt  if  any  of  you  know  the  rhyme  for 
"babe,"  unless  you  happen  to  be  familiar  with  this 
poem  of  Swinburne's  or  with  those  of  Chaucer,  who 
also  used  this  word.  There  is  such  a  word  and 
Swinburne  ingeniously  introduces  it  towards  the 
end  of  his  poem.  He  writes: 

Babe,  if  rhyme  be  none 

For  that  small  sweet  word, 
Babe,  the  sweetest  one 

Ever  heard, 
Right  it  is  and  sweet 

Rhyme  should  not  keep  true 
Time  with  such  a  sweet 

Thing  as  you  .  .  . 
.  .  .  None  can  tell  in  metre 

Fit  for  ears  on  earth 
What  sweet  star  grew  sweeter 

At  your  birth. 
Wisdom  doubts  what  may  be; 

Hope  with  smile  sublime 
Trusts,  but  neither,  baby 

Knows  the  rhyme. 
Wisdom  lies  down  lonely; 

Hope  keeps  watch  from  far; 
None  but  one  seer  only 

Sees  the  star. 
[264] 


SWINBURNE  AND  THOMPSON 

Love  alone,  with  yearning 

Heart  for  astrolabe 
Takes  the  star's  height,  burning 

O'er  the  babe. 

Compare  this,  not  with  Francis  Thompson's 
"Hound  of  Heaven,"  but  with  another  poem  on 
childhood,  and  from  that  poem  decide  which  of  the 
two  poets  had  the  real  inspiration.  Compare  it  with 
Francis  Thompson's  poem  to  his  god-child.  In  this 
he  imagines  himself  as  having  died,  and  he  imagines 
that  the  little  boy  has  died  too.  So  he  gives  the 
little  boy  a  kind  of  working  plan  of  Heaven — he 
tells  him  where  he  may  find  him  after  he  goes  to 
Heaven.  He  writes : 

And  when,  immortal  mortal,  droops  your  head, 
And  you,  the  child  of  deathless  song,  are  dead ; 
Then,  as  you  search  with  unaccustomed  glance 
The  ranks  of  Paradise  for  my  countenance, 
Turn  not  your  tread  along  the  Uranian  sod, 
Among  the  bearded  counsellors  of  God ; 
For  if  in  Eden  as  on  earth  are  we 
I  sure  shall  keep  a  younger  company: 
Pass  where  beneath  their  ranged  ganfalonS 
The  starry  cohorts  shake  their  shielded  suns, 
The  dreadful  mass  of  their  enridged  spears; 
Pass  where  majestical  the  Eternal  peers 
The  stately  choice  of  the  great  saintdom  meet, — 

[265] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

A  silvern  congregation,  globed  complete 

In  sandalled  shadow  of  the  Triune  feet : 

Pass  by  where  wait,  your  poet  wayfarer, 

Your  cousin  clusters,  emulous  to  share 

With  you  the  roseal  lightnings  burning  mid  their 

hair; 

Pass  the  crystalline  sea,  the  Lampads  Seven: — 
Look  for  me  in  the  nurseries  of  Heaven. 


I  have  said  that  Francis  Thompson  was  great 
and  simple  enough  to  do  the  obvious  thing.  Take 
the  mere  matter  of  how  to  act  and  what  to  say  in 
regard  to  a  crucifix,  for  example.  When  that  ad 
mirable  poet  Dante  Gabriel  Rossetti  was  before  a 
crucifix,  or  had  it  in  mind  as  the  theme  of  a  poem, 
he  would  admire  the  carving,  and  write  a  colorful 
romantic  ballad  about  the  man  who  made  it,  the 
man  who  sold  it,  the  people  through  whose  hands  it 
had  passed.  The  result  would  be  a  beautiful  poem, 
but  it  would  be  elaborate,  artificial,  the  result  of 
ingenious  effort.  When  Swinburne  was  before  a 
crucifix,  he  was  reminded  of  the  false  delights  for 
which  he  longed,  and  which  he  thought  Christian 
ity  had  driven  from  the  world.  So  he  would  rave 
and  blaspheme  against  the  crucifix  and  all  that  it 
represented — producing  verse  that  is  technically 
excellent,  but  artificial  and  unnatural.  But  when 
[266] 


SWINBURNE  AND  THOMPSON 

Francis  Thompson  had  a  crucifix  before  him  or  in 
mind,  he  would  do  the  simplest  and  most  natural 
thing  in  the  world.  He  would  say  his  prayers. 
And  because  he  was  a  genius  he  said  them  in  words 
that  are,  as  we  use  the  term  of  literature,  immortal. 


[267] 


A  NOTE  ON  THOMAS  HARDY 

OF  Elizabeth-Jane  who  is  the  heroine  of  "The 
Mayor  of  Casterbridge,"  if  heroine  this  tale 
may  be  said  to  have,  we  learn  that  "she  did  not 
cease  to  wonder  at  the  persistence  of  the  unforeseen, 
when  the  one  to  whom  such  unbroken  tranquillity 
had  been  accorded  in  the  adult  stage  was  she  whose 
youth  had  seemed  to  teach  that  happiness  was  but 
the  occasional  episode  in  a  general  drama  of  pain." 
This  is  a  rather  Jacobean  sentence,  in  form  not 
typical  of  Hardy,  but  in  thought  it  is  greatly  sig 
nificant.  It  is  likely  that  Hardy  himself  wondered 
at  the  happiness  in  which  he  left  Elizabeth-Jane, 
reassuring  himself  perhaps  by  the  conviction  that 
her  "unbroken  tranquillity"  was  the  exception 
which  proved  the  rule  her  youth  had  taught  her. 
For  it  cannot  be  denied  that  according  to  the 
Hardy  philosophy,  implicit  in  his  tales  and  explicit 
in  his  poems,  sorrow  is  the  rule  and  joy  the  excep 
tion.  In  no  other  writing  is  he  more  clearly  a  fatalist 
than  in  "The  Mayor  of  Casterbridge";  in  no  other 
book  does  he  urge  more  unmistakably  his  belief  that 
[268] 


A  NOTE  ON  THOMAS  HARDY 

men  and  women  are  but  helpless  puppets  in  the 
hands  of  mischievous  fate,  that  good-will  and  cour 
age  and  honesty  are  brittle  weapons  for  humanity's 
defense. 

The  evident  fact  that  Thomas  Hardy  is  a  fatal 
ist  is  responsible  for  the  common  and  absurd  idea 
that  he  is  a  pagan.  Now,  there  is  no  philosophy — 
with  the  exception  of  the  robust  and  joyous  philos 
ophy  of  the  Middle  Ages — with  which  Hardy's 
philosophy  contrasts  more  strongly  than  it  does 
with  paganism,  that  is,  with  the  pagan  philosophy 
of  the  spacious  classic  day.  When  we  speak  of  a 
pagan  of  ancient  Greece  or  a  pagan  of  ancient 
Rome  we  have  in  mind  a  brave  patriotic  man,  with 
a  vivid  sense  of  the  responsibilities  arid  privileges  of 
citizenship,  and  the  habit  of  making  the  most  of 
life,  of  enjoying  to  the  full  the  years  allowed  him  on 
earth.  This  last  characteristic  rose  from  the  pagan 
fatalism,  the  belief  that  man  should  make  sure  of 
such  visible  and  tangible  delights  as  were  available, 
because  there  was  no  counting  on  the  possibility  of 
happiness  or  even  of  existence  after  death.  This 
was  the  state  of  mind  which  succeeded  the  earlier 
romantic  polytheism,  and  was  the  natural  successor 
of  a  religious  system  which  attributed  to  the  gods 
power  over  mankind  but  neither  love  nor  justice. 

[269] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

So  the  typical  fatalism  was  materialistic;  it  was 
based,  of  course,  upon  despair,  but  its  manifesta 
tions  were  not  desperate.  Rather  there  was  a  gen 
eral  conspiracy  of  joy,  not  dissimilar  to  that  of  a 
popular  religious  cult  which  arose  in  the  United 
States  during  the  last  half  century.  Disease  and 
sorrow  and  death  were  to  be  generally  ignored; 
mankind  was  expected  to  eat,  drink  and  be  merry, 
and  good  manners  required  silence  as  to  the  ex 
planatory  "for  to-morrow  we  die." 

However  hollow  may  have  been  mirth  of  the 
pagan  fatalists,  it  was  at  any  rate  loud  and  general. 
And  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  by  a  kind  of  self- 
hypnosis  these  fatalists  were  able  to  give  their  joy 
a  convincingness  and  a  continuity — they  "were  al 
ways  drunken,"  in  Baudelaire's  sense.  Artificial 
and  in  essence  tragic  as  was  their  state  of  mind,  he 
would  be  a  false  historian  who  pictured  these  pagan 
fatalists  as  people  obsessed  with  the  idea  of  death 
and  the  unkindness  of  the  gods;  as  holding  with 
anything  like  unanimity  the  belief  that  "happiness 
was  but  the  occasional  episode  in  a  general  drama 
of  pain." 

But  this  is  Hardy's  dominant  idea;  it  is  a  belief 
on  which  he  insists  with  a  propagandist  enthusiasm 
which  sometimes  mars  the  artistic  value  of  his  work. 
[270] 


A  NOTE  ON  THOMAS  HARDY 

No  Scotch  or  English  members  of  some  stricter  off 
shoot  of  a  strict  Calvinistic  sect  ever  was  more  firm 
ly  convinced  that  this  earth  is  a  vale  of  tears,  or 
more  eager  to  spread  this  belief.  Every  writer,  I 
think,  deals  with  the  characters  who  are  his  crea 
tions  as  he  imagines  God  to  deal  with  mankind. 
This  is  why  literary  criticism  is  closer  to  theology 
than  to  any  other  science;  this  is  why  we  cannot 
claim  to  understand  any  writer  unless  we  know 
what  he  thinks  about  God.  And  the  God  of 
Hardy's  belief,  as  indicated  in  his  long  succession 
of  stories  and  poems,  is  no  more  the  remote,  in 
different,  sensuous,  self-sufficient  Deity  of  the 
pagan  fatalist  than  he  is  the  loving  and  omnipotent 
Father  of  true  Christian  belief.  Instead  he  is  the 
stern,  avenging  Deity  of  the  Hebrews,  without 
pity,  accessible  to  no  intercessors,  the  Deity  whom 
we  find  to-day  fearfully  worshiped  by  adherents 
of  the  bleakest  forms  of  Puritanism.  It  would  be  a 
misnomer  to  call  Hardy's  philosophy  a  Christian 
fatalism,  but  it  is  a  fatalism  which  is  the  basis  of 
the  religious  systems  of  many  who  since  1517  have 
professed  and  called  themselves  Christians. 

I  am  frequently  impressed,  as  I  read  Hardy, 
with  what  I  may  call  the  evangelical  cast  of  his 
mind.  He  is  so  intent  on  announcing  his  discovery 

[271] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

that  mankind  is  fallible,  unhappy,  helpless,  un 
desirable.  The  people  of  Hardy's  stories  are  so 
virtueless,  for  the  most  part,  that  the  reader  can 
readily  believe  that  Hardy  is  determined  to  show 
that  they  deserve  no  pity  from  the  extraordinary 
Deity  who  is  also  a  creature  of  Hardy's  imagina 
tion,  and  that  in  his  own  way  the  novelist  (like  his 
greatest  Puritan  predecessor  in  literature)  is  try 
ing  to  "justify  the  ways  of  God  toward  man."  And 
"The  Mayor  of  Casterbridge,"  with  its  lovely  pic 
tures  of  Wessex  hills  and  valleys  and  its  most  un 
lovely  pictures  of  Wessex  men  and  women,  irre 
sistibly  recalls  lines  from  a  certain  popular  evangel 
ical  hymn — the  lines  which  tell  of  a  place  "where 
every  prospect  pleases  and  only  man  is  vile." 

Hardy  is  a  true  realist  in  that  he  reports  faith 
fully  the  habits  and  manners  of  people  with  whom 
he  is  familiar,  and  in  that — unlike  Mr.  Dreiser  and 
other  claimants  to  the  title  realist — he  has  humor 
and  admits  it  to  his  chronicles.  Also  he  admits 
good  impulses  to  the  lives  he  creates,  although  his 
philosophy  seldom  lets  him  cause  these  impulses  to 
be  translated  into  successful  action.  He  is  poet 
enough  to  have  a  sense  of  beauty  and  humor  inher 
ent  in  phrases.  "But  I  know  that  Vs  a  banded 
teetotaler,"  says  Solomon  Longways,  "and  that  if 
[272] 


A  NOTE  ON  THOMAS  HARDY 

any  of  his  men  be  ever  so  little  overtook  by  a  drop 
he's  down  upon  'em  as  stern  as  the  Lord  upon  the 
jovial  Jews."  And  what  living  poet  could  write 
a  simpler  and  more  moving  study  of  the  immemo 
rial  subject,  death,  than  Mother  Cuxsom's  brief 
elegy  on  Mrs.  Henchard?  "Well,  poor  soul,  she's 
helpless  to  hinder  that  or  anything  now.  And  all 
her  shining  keys  will  be  took  from  her,  and  her 
cupboards  opened;  and  little  things  a'  didn't  wish 
seen,  anybody  will  see;  and  her  wishes  and  ways 
will  all  be  as  nothing." 

A  student  of  literary  motives  can  easily  trace 
the  working  of  Hardy's  philosophy  in  this  book — 
can  see  it  guiding  the  novelist's  pen,  changing  his 
purposes,  forcing  him  to  deal  harshly,  sometimes, 
with  characters  whom  a  writer  must  come  to  love 
as  a  father  his  children.  Was  not  Matthew  Hench- 
ard's  rehabilitation  to  be  complete,  and  the  tale  to 
end  with  a  prosperous  reunited  family?  Probably, 
but  Thomas  Hardy  (unlike  Victor  Hugo  when  he 
handled  a  similar  plot  in  "Les  Miserables")  had  his 
monster  theory  to  reckon  with.  So  Elizabeth-Jane 
must  be  Newson's  child,  Lucette  must  maleficently 
tangle  lives,  and  Henchard  must  die  in  a  road-side 
hut.  And  even  the  goldfinch  must  starve  in  its 
paper-covered  cage. 

[273] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

And  how  Hardy  enjoys  the  moments  when  he 
escapes  his  obsession!  He  had  as  much  fun  when 
Henchard  and  Farfrae  wrestled  on  the  top  floor 
of  the  granary  as  Blackmore  did  in  the  Homeric 
fisticuffs  of  "Lorna  Doone."  When  Hardy  dressed 
up  Lucetta  and  sent  her  out  to  plead  with  Hench 
ard  he  had  the  same  sporting  excitement  that 
Thackeray  had  when  he  prepared  Becky  Sharp  for 
her  conquests.  At  such  times  Hardy  seems  mo 
mentarily  to  accept  the  existence  of  free  will,  with 
its  tremendous  dramatic  possibilities.  These  are 
his  moments  of  greatest  creative  power,  of  highest 
poetry,  of  clearest  discernment.  They  occur  more 
frequently  and  they  last  longer  in  his  latest  writ 
ings.  The  War  has  seen  to  that. 

Copyright,  1917,  by  Boni  &  Liveright.    Reprinted  from  their  Mod 
ern  Library  Edition  by  special  arrangement. 


[274] 


MADISON  JULIUS  CAWEINi 

(1865-1914) 

AMERICA  has  had  two  great  poets  of  nature 
— two  men  called  to  the  task  of  reflecting  in 
a  mirror  of  words  the  beauty  of  meadow  and  forest. 
One  of  these  was  William  Cullen  Bryant.     The 
other  was  Madison  Julius  Cawein. 

As  Bryant  drew  his  inspiration  from  the  wooded 
hills  and  fertile  valleys  of  his  native  New  England, 
so  Madison  Cawein  drew  his  from  the  meadows  of 
the  South,  especially  those  of  Kentucky.  The  term 
"nature  poet"  has  been  used  in  derision  of  some 
writers  who  lavish  sentimental  adulation  upon 
every  bird  and  flower,  who  pretend  an  admiration 
for  things  of  which  they  have  no  real  understand 
ing.  But  Madison  Cawein  knew  what  he  was  writ 
ing  about ;  he  had  an  amazing,  we  might  say  a  peril 
ous,  intimacy  with  nature.  And  he  had  no  vague 
love  for  all  nature — he  knew  too  much  for  that. 
True,  he  knew  nature  in  her  delicate  and  in  her 
splendid  aspect — he  saw  the  barberry  redden  in  the 

[275] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

lanes,  he  feasted  his  eyes  on  "the  orange  and  amber 
of  the  marigold,  the  terra-cottas  of  the  zinnia  flow 
ers,"  he  learned  lovely  secrets  from  whippoorwill, 
swallow,  and  cricket,  and  he  could  see  drowsy  Sum 
mer  rocking  the  world  to  sleep  in  her  kindly  arms. 
But  also  he  knew  (with  a  knowledge  which  only 
Algernon  Blackwood  among  contemporary  writers 
has  equaled)  that  nature  has  her  cruel  and  terrible 
aspects.  He  knew  that  the  daily  life  of  bird  and 
beast — yes,  and  the  daily  life  of  flower  and  tree — 
is  as  much  a  tragedy  as  a  comedy.  So  (in  the  son 
net-sequence  he  wrote  by  the  Massachusetts  shore 
in  1911)  he  saw  a  certain  grove  as  "a  sad  room,  de 
voted  to  the  dead";  he  felt  the  relentlessness  of  the 
ocean  mists  invading  the  shore;  he  saw  an  autumn 
branch  staining  a  pool  like  a  blur  of  blood;  he 
made  us  share  his  genuine  terror  of  deserted  mill- 
streams  where  "the  cardinal-flower,  in  the  sun's 
broad  beam,  with  sudden  scarlet  takes  you  by  sur 
prise,"  and  of  dark  and  menacing  swamps,  ominous 
with  trembling  moss,  purple-veined  pitcher-plants 
and  wild  grass  trailing  over  the  bank  like  the  hair 
of  a  drowned  girl.  His  studies  of  nature  were  ac 
curate  enough  to  satisfy  any  botanist — Miss  Jessie 
B.  Rittenhouse  has  said  that  one  might  explore  the 
Kentucky  woods  and  fields  with  a  volume  of 
[276] 


MADISON  JULIUS  CAWEIN 

Cawein's  poems  as  a  handbook  and  identify  many 
a  lowly  and  exquisite  bower  first  recognized  in 
song.  But  his  poems  were  not  mere  catalogues  of 
natural  beauties,  any  more  than  they  were  senti 
mental  idealizations  of  them.  They  were,  to  re 
peat  a  phrase,  reflections  of  nature,  reflections 
painted  rather  than  photographed,  but  interpreted 
rather  than  romanticized. 

Madison  Cawein  had  not  long  to  wait  for  the 
recognition  which  he  enjoyed  throughout  his  life. 
Born  on  March  23rd,  1865,  in  Louisville,  Ken 
tucky,  and  educated  in  the  high  school  of  his  native 
city,  he  published  his  first  book,  "Blooms  of  the 
Berry,"  in  1887.  "The  Triumph  of  Music"  fol 
lowed  in  1888,  and  soon  after  its  publication  Mr. 
William  Dean  Howells  wrote  of  the  young  South 
ern  poet  words  that  brought  him  to  the  attention  of 
a  large  audience,  words  that  applied  as  truly  to  his 
posthumous  book,  "The  Cup  of  Comus,"  as  to  the 
rhymes  of  his  boyhood.  In  the  North  American 
Review,  Mr.  Howells  wrote: 

"He  has  the  gift,  in  a  measure  that  I  do  not  think 
surpassed  in  any  poet,  of  touching  some  smallest  or 
commonest  thing  in  nature  and  making  it  live  from 
the  manifold  associations  in  which  we  have  our 

[277] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

being,  and  glow  thereafter  with  an  inextinguishable 
beauty." 

From  1887  to  the  time  of  his  death,  scarcely  a 
year  passed  that  did  not  see  the  publication  of  a 
new  book  of  poems  by  Madison  Cawein.  Of  course, 
this  caused  him  to  be  accused  of  writing  too  much, 
of  giving  the  world  poems  written  hastily  and  care 
lessly.  There  was  some  justice  in  this  accusation; 
undoubtedly  he  would  have  written  better  poems  if 
he  had  written  fewer.  Mr.  H.  Houston  Peckham, 
of  Purdue  University,  in  an  article  which  appeared 
in  the  South  Atlantic  Quarterly  soon  after 
Cawein's  death,  told  a  story  which  is  significant. 
The  poet  was  about  to  destroy  one  of  his  lyrics. 
A  friend  rescued  it  and  sent  it  to  a  magazine. 
When  it  appeared  in  print,  it  was  shown  to  Cawein, 
who  failed  to  recognize  it  as  his  own  work.  He  had 
utterly  forgotten  it  in  the  course  of  a  few  months. 

Now,  for  a  poet  to  forget  the  children  of  his  own 
fancy  is  a  sign  that  he  is  writing  too  much.  And 
yet  Madison  Cawein  was  not  so  prolific  as  a  list  of 
his  more  than  a  score  of  volumes  would  indicate. 
For  many  of  his  books  contained  poems  that  had 
already  appeared  between  covers — this  is  true  of 
the  Macmillan  volume  called  "Poems"  and  of 
many  others.  He  seemed  to  desire  to  produce  a 
[278] 


MADISON  JULIUS  CAWEIN 

book  annually — but  fortunately  for  his  art  he  did 
not  believe  it  necessary  that  every  volume  should 
contain  only  new  poems. 

In  one  of  the  most  famous  of  his  essays,  Ruskin 
wrote : 

"It  is,  I  hope,  now  made  clear  to  the  reader  in 
all  respects  that  the  pathetic  fallacy  is  powerful 
only  so  far  as  it  is  pathetic,  feeble  so  far  as  it  is 
fallacious,  and,  therefore,  that  the  dominion  of 
Truth  is  entire,  over  this  as  over  every  other  natural 
and  just  state  of  the  human  mind." 

Madison  Cawein  was  a  loyal  subject  of  Truth, 
the  accuracy  of  his  descriptions  of  nature  has 
seldom  been  called  into  question.  As  to  the 
pathetic  fallacy  and  his  relation  to  it — that  might 
be  the  subject  of  an  interesting  study.  At  any  rate 
it  may  be  said  that  he  seldom  indulged  in  that  com 
mon  and  thoroughly  normal  fallacy  by  which  the 
poet  sees  nature  weep  because  of  his  own  sorrow 
or  smile  because  of  his  own  joy.  Instead,  he  was 
filled  with  the  gloom  native  to  the  swamp  which  he 
beheld,  or  with  mirth  that  he  caught  from  the  Ijrric 
ecstasy  of  the  dawn. 

He  was  a  sympathetic  student  of  humanity,  as 
every  true  poet  must  be,  and  he  resented  the  state 
ment  that  mankind  had  no  place  in  his  poetic  vision. 

[279] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

But  he  was  at  his  best  when  he  wrote  not  of  reason 
able  humanity  but  of  the  world  of  animal  and  veg 
etable  things  that  have  no  reason  but  have,  to  the 
poet,  qualities  stranger  and  more  interesting  than 
reason.  He  wrote  well  of  a  ploughman,  but  better 
of  the  field  in  which  the  ploughman  worked.  He 
wrote  well  of  a  house  full  of  men  and  women  and 
children,  but  better  of  an  empty  house  with  its 
myrtle  run  wild,  its  paths  hidden  by  flowering  grass, 
and  swallows  flying  through  its  broken  windows. 
He  subordinated  himself  to  wild  nature,  letting  her 
speak  to  the  world  through  him,  instead  of  merely 
going  to  her  for  metaphors  appropriate  to  his  own 
emotional  experiences.  And  this,  while  it  resulted 
in  beautiful  poetry,  was  a  dangerous  thing  to  do. 
"Nature,  poor  stepdame,  cannot  slake  my  drouth," 
said  another  poet,  "never  did  any  milk  of  hers  once 
bless  my  thirsting  mouth."  Madison  Cawein  got, 
it  seems,  little  gratitude  from  Nature,  although  to 
do  her  honor  he  had  curiously  distorted  the  true 
vision  of  man's  place  in  the  universe.  When  his 
frail  body  was  put  in  the  frozen  earth  a  few  years 
ago,  it  seemed  to  many  of  his  friends  and  critics 
that  he  had  died  at  the  beginning  of  a  new  phase  of 
his  genius,  that  his  latest  poems,  vague  and  tenta 
tive  as  some  of  them  were,  showed  that  he  was  look- 
[280] 


MADISON  JULIUS  CAWEIN 

ing  at  the  world  with  a  new  sense  of  proportion, 
and  that  hereafter  his  whole  scheme  of  things  would 
be  differently  arranged — man  being  the  center  of 
the  visible  universe,  and  not,  as  in  Blackwood's 
novels,  a  wondering  visitor  to  a  world  of  plants  and 
beasts. 

But  death  intervened,  and  what  he  might  have 
wrritten  can  only  be  guessed  from  such  poems  as 
"The  Song  of  Songs"  and  "Laus  Deo"  and  "The 
Iron  Age"  in  "The  Cup  of  Comus."  What  he  ac 
complished  was  worth  doing,  and  he  did  it  well. 
He  put  the  meadows  and  forests  of  the  South  into 
poems  as  hauntingly  beautiful  as  themselves. 


[281] 


FRANCIS  THOMPSON 

(1859-1907) 

POETIC  sensations  are  rare  in  our  time.  For 
a  quarter  of  a  century  we  have  enjoyed  a 
regular  succession  of  excellent  books  of  verse — 
verse  graceful,  fanciful,  musical,  interesting,  and 
sometimes  noble.  Perhaps  the  general  average  of 
verse  is  higher  to-day  than  it  has  previously  been 
in  the  history  of  English  letters.  But  there  have 
been  few  books  of  verse  which  have  caused  the  heart 
of  the  public  to  beat  faster,  few  books  of  verse  which 
critics  have  carried  in  their  pockets  for  weeks  at  a 
time  to  show  to  their  friends. 

There  has  been  one  such  book,  however.  In  1893 
was  published  "Poems,"  by  Francis  Thompson. 
And  this  volume  (as  even  Thompson's  enemies  can 
not  deny)  excited,  favorably  or  unfavorably,  all  its 
reviewers.  Some  hailed  it  as  a  work  of  surpassing 
genius,  some  found  it  irritatingly  bad.  But  all  felt 
about  it  passionately;  no  one  damned  it  with  faint 
praise  and  no  one  praised  it  with  faint  damns. 
[282] 


FRANCIS  THOMPSON 

Francis  Thompson  was  a  Roman  Catholic  and 
his  faith  gave  him  the  themes,  the  imagery,  often 
the  phraseology,  and  the  inspiration  of  all  his  best 
poetry.  Yet  his  first  most  admiring  critics  were 
men  by  no  means  in  sympathy  with  his  religion. 
H.  D.  Traill,  a  North  of  Ireland  Protestant,  wel 
comed  him  as  "a  new  poet  of  the  first  rank."  Rich 
ard  Le  Gallienne  called  him  "Crashaw  born  again, 
but  born  greater."  John  Davidson  said  "Thomp 
son's  poetry  at  its  highest  attains  a  sublimity  un 
surpassed  by  any  other  Victorian  poet."  And 
Arnold  Bennett  wrote  of  Thompson's  second  book 
"Sister  Songs,"  "My  belief  is  that  Francis  Thomp 
son  has  a  richer  natural  genius,  a  finer  poetical 
equipment,  than  any  poet  save  Shakespeare." 

Of  course  there  were  hostile  critics.  Some  of 
them  were  annoyed  by  the  poet's  phraseology, 
especially  his  use  of  words  of  Latin  derivation  and 
of  forms  which  he  coined  for  his  own  use.  But 
most  of  them  were  annoyed  by  his  themes;  they 
resented  the  intrusion  of  a  flaming  Catholicity 
among  the  delicate  artificial  philosophies  of  the 
poets  of  the  nineties,  and  their  resentment  found 
voice  in  attacks  that  recalled  the  brave  old  days 
of  "This  will  never  do"  and  "Back  to  your  galli 
pots!"  That  this  resentment  continued,  in  some 

[283] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

minds,  even  after  the  poet  had  died  and  his  work 
had  been  received  as  an  inalienable  part  of  the 
world's  treasury  of  English  song  is  shown  by  the 
savagery  of  Austin  Harrison's  "review"  of  Ever- 
ard  Meynell's  "Life  of  Francis  Thompson"  in  the 
English  Review  in  1913. 

Francis  Thompson  was  born  on  the  16th  of  De 
cember,  1859,  at  Preston,  Lancashire,  England. 
In  his  boyhood  he  was  taught  at  the  school  of  the 
Ntms  of  the  Cross  and  Passion,  and  in  1870. he 
entered  Ushaw  College.  After  seven  years  at 
Ushaw — years  marked  by  one  great  tragedy,  the 
decision  by  those  in  authority  that  his  "nervous 
timidity"  unfitted  him  for  the  priesthood — he  went 
to  Owens  College  as  a  student  of  medicine.  His 
years  in  Manchester  taught  him  little  medicine,  but 
they  taught  him  other  things  destined  to  affect  his 
life.  Francis  Thompson  read  books,  but  they  were 
not  surgical  treatises.  They  were  books  of  poetry, 
of  essay,  of  theology,  of  scholastic  philosophy.  His 
love  for  music  increased,  and  he  attended  more  con 
certs  than  lectures.  Also  in  Manchester  he  ac 
quired  his  besetting  sin — the  opium  habit.  He 
took  the  drug  first  in  the  form  of  laudanum,  during 
a  painful  illness.  He  continued  to  take  it  through 
out  many  years  of  his  life.  It  staved  off  the  as- 
[284] 


FRANCIS  THOMPSON 

saults  of  tuberculosis,  it  prevented  his  success  in 
medicine  or  any  other  methodical  and  exact  career, 
and  thus  removed  what  might  have  been  rivals  to 
the  art  of  poetry.  But,  as  his  biographer  says, 
opium  "dealt  with  him  remorselessly  as  it  dealt  with 
Coleridge  and  all  its  consumers.  It  put  him  in  such 
constant  strife  with  his  own  conscience  that  he  had 
ever  to  hide  himself  from  himself,  and  for  conceal 
ment  he  fled  to  that  which  made  him  ashamed,  until 
it  was  as  if  a  fig-leaf  were  of  necessity  plucked  from 
the  Tree  of  the  Fall.  It  killed  in  him  the  capacity 
for  acknowledging  those  duties  to  his  family  and 
friends,  which,  had  his  heart  not  been  in  shackles, 
he  would  have  owned  with  no  ordinary  ardor." 

Francis  Thompson's  years  immediately  after  his 
failure  in  his  medical  examinations  were  spent  in 
London,  in  poverty  and  ill  health.  But  no  man 
of  genius  can  long  remain  hidden.  In  a  strange 
and  romantic  manner,  some  of  his  magnificent 
poetry  and  prose  came  to  the  attention  of  Wilfred 
and  Alice  Meynell.  They  gave  to  the  world  the 
blessing  of  acquaintance  with  Francis  Thompson's 
work,  and  to  the  poet  they  gave,  in  addition  to  more 
material  benefits,  the  wise  and  affectionate  friend 
ship  his  lonely  spirit  most  needed.  He  resisted  the 
opium  habit,  increased  in  physical  and  mental 

[285] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

health,  gained  congenial  employment  as  a  reviewer 
for  the  best  of  the  London  weeklies.  The  publica 
tion  of  his  books  established  him,  in  the  opinion  of 
those  whose  opinion  was  most  worth-while,  as  a 
figure  of  great  literary  importance.  He  died  "a 
very  good  death"  at  the  age  of  forty-eight.  Had 
his  mind  been  (as  fortunately  it  was  not)  concerned 
with  literature  in  his  last  hours  he  would  have 
known  that  he  had  attained  a  fame  of  the  kind  that 
does  not  tarnish  with  the  years,  that  he  had  realized 
the  poet's  ambition  of  adding  substantially  to  the 
world's  heritage  of  beauty. 

If  Francis  Thompson  is  to  be  related  by  critics 
and  historians  of  literature  to  writers  of  a  more 
recent  date  than  that  of  Crashaw  and  Southwell, 
it  must  be  to  the  poets  of  the  Pre-Raphaelite 
Brotherhood.  What  they  promised,  Thompson 
fulfilled.  In  a  materialistic  and  sophisticated  age, 
Rossetti  and  his  friends  sought  to  reproduce  the 
romantic  splendors  of  the  Middle  Ages.  They  took 
delight  in  the  lovely  externalities  of  the  Catholic 
Church.  Rossetti's  friend,  Coventry  Patmore, 
went  further  than  the  Pre-Raphaelites ;  he  became 
a  Catholic  and  thus  carried  the  theories  of  the  Pre- 
Raphaelite  Brotherhood  to  their  logical  and  tre 
mendous  conclusion.  Patmore's  greater  disciple, 
[286] 


FRANCIS  THOMPSON 

Francis  Thompson,  brought  back  to  English 
poetry  the  knowledge,  largely  forgotten  since  the 
Reformation,  that  the  proper  study  of  mankind 
is  God;  he  refused  to  limit  his  mind,  as  his  con 
temporaries  did  theirs,  by  temporal  and  astro 
nomical  boundaries.  A  universal  poet  must  sing 
the  universe.  And  the  center  of  the  universe  is 
God.  So  Francis  Thompson  sang  of  God,  and  in 
"The  Hound  of  Heaven"  he  made  of  man's  relation 
to  God  and  God's  relation  to  man  a  poem  that 
is  unsurpassed  in  the  literature  of  spiritual  expe 
rience.  And  all  great  poetry  deals  with  spiritual 
experience. 


[287] 


JOHN  MASEFIELD 

(1874—) 

TO  be  versatile  and  prolific  generally  is  to  be 
unimportant.    Especially  in  literature,  Jack- 
of-all-trades  is,  as  a  rule,  master  of  none.    An  ex 
ception  brilliantly  proving  this  rule  is  John  Mase- 
field. 

Homer  (scholars  tell  us)  was  not  one  man  but 
a  company  of  poets,  writing  through  more  than  one 
century.  Shakespeare  (we  are  encouraged  to  be 
lieve)  was  not  a  theatrical  manager  who  liked  oc 
casionally  to  build  a  play  to  show  his  dramatists 
how  it  should  be  done,  but  a  syndicate  of  philoso 
phers,  poets,  playwrights,  scientists,  and  politi 
cians.  Three  hundred  years  from  now  literary  de 
tectives  will  busy  themselves  with  discovering  the 
names  of  the  sailor,  the  farmer,  the  Hellenist,  the 
Orientalist,  the  sociologist,  the  realist,  the  roman 
ticist,  the  dramatist,  the  ballad  maker,  the  sonnet 
eer,  the  novelist,  the  short  story  writer,  who  called 
their  conspiracy  John  Masefield.  They  will  attrib- 
[288] 


JOHN  MASEFIELD 

ute  some  of  the  "Salt  Water  Ballads"  to  Kipling, 
some  to  Henry  Newbolt,  some  to  C.  Fox  Smith. 
They  will  attribute  "The  Sweeps  of  Ninety-Eight" 
to  Dr.  Douglas  Hyde.  They  will  attribute  "The 
Faithful"  to  Sturge  Moore.  They  will  attribute 
"The  Tragedy  of  Nan"  to  D.  H.  Lawrence,  part 
of  "A  Mainsail  Haul"  to  Charles  Whibley,  part 
of  it  to  Algernon  Blackwood,  and  part  of  it  to 
Robert  Louis  Stevenson.  And  some  of  his  ballads 
they  will  attribute  to  Wilfrid  Gibson  and  some  of 
his  lyrics  to  William  Butler  Yeats.  This  will  be  a 
stupid  thing  for  them  to  do,  but  nevertheless,  they 
will  do  it. 

One  reason  why  the  conduct  of  these  hypotheti 
cal  scholars  is  particularly  irritating  is  that  John 
Masefield  is  a  writer  of  strong  individuality.  He 
has  a  distinct  and  easily  recognizable  style;  his 
theme  may  be  a  battle  of  wits  between  Tiger  Roche 
and  the  rebel  hunters  of  1798,  or  the  tragedy  of 
Nan  Hardwick  and  the  mutton  parsties  and  the 
malicious  Pargetters,  or  the  great  intrigues  of  royal 
Spain,  or  the  ambitions  of  Pompey,  or  the  soul  of 
man  in  its  relation  to  the  mercy  of  God — whatever 
his  theme  may  be,  his  style  is  the  same.  The 
writer's  eyes  may  be  fixed  upon  the  mysteries  of 
his  own  heart,  or  they  may  be  searching  the  bound- 

[289] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

less  heavens;  he  is,  nevertheless,  always  a  realist. 
They  may  be  curiously  studying  tne  most  ordinary 
details  of  modern  life ;  he  is,  nevertheless,  always  an 
idealist.  So  the  intellectual,  perhaps  it  might  be 
said  the  spiritual,  attitude  of  John  Masefield  is  un 
varying.  And  in  this  is  to  be  found  the  reason  for 
the  intense  individuality  of  the  writer  as  seen  in 
his  works,  for  the  feeling,  common  to  all  his  read 
ers,  of  being  in  direct  communication  with  him. 
And  the  style  of  the  sequence  of  sonnets  in  the 
Shakespearean  manner  is  much  the  same  as  that 
of  the  stories  about  pirates  and  the  drama  of 
ancient  Japan.  The  nervous  expressive  diction, 
the  direct  Elizabethan  colloquialism,  these  things 
are  Masefield;  the  form  may  vary,  but  not  in  its 
characteristics,  the  language. 

A  writer's  attitude  toward  life  and  toward  the 
things  beyond  life  is  his  own;  it  is  not  to  be  ac 
counted  for  by  heredity  or  environment.  But  a 
writer's  style  must  necessarily  be  influenced  by 
what  he  reads  and  by  the  talk  of  those  with  whom 
he  spends  the  formative  periods  of  his  life.  Even 
the  careless  reader  of  John  Masefield's  books  will 
notice  occasionally  in  them,  especially  in  the  lyrics, 
a  strong  Celtic  flavor.  Masefield's  "Sea-Fever" 
and  "Roadways"  and  "Cardigan  Bay"  and  "Trade 
[290] 


JOHN  MASEFIELD 

Winds"  and  "The  Harper's  Song"  surely  belong 
to  the  same  family  as  Eva  Gore  Booth's  "The 
Little  Waves  of  Breffny"  and  William  Butler 
Yeats's  "The  Lake  Isle  of  Innisfree."  Further 
more,  Masefield  has  that  belief  in  the  beauty  of 
tragedy,  tragedy  in  itself  without  regard  to  its 
moral  significance,  which  is  characteristic  of  many 
of  the  Irish  writers  of  our  generation.  In  the  pref 
ace  to  "The  Tragedy  of  N'an"  he  writes: 

"Tragedy  at  its  best  is  a  vision  of  the  heart  of 
life.  The  heart  of  life  can  only  be  laid  bare  in 
the  agony  and  exultation  of  dreadful  acts.  The 
vision  of  agony,  or  spiritual  contest,  pushed  be 
yond  the  limits  of  the  dying  personality,  is  exalt 
ing  and  cleansing.  It  is  only  by  such  visions  that 
a  multitude  can  be  brought  to  the  passionate 
knowledge  of  things  exulting  and  eternal.  .  .  .  Our 
playwrights  have  all  the  powers  except  that  power 
of  exaltation  which  comes  from  a  delighted  brood 
ing  on  excessive,  terrible  things.  That  power  is 
seldom  granted  to  men;  twice  or  thrice  to  a  race 
perhaps,  not  oftener.  But  it  seems  to  me  certain 
that  every  effort,  however  humble,  towards  the 
achieving  of  that  power  helps  the  genius  of  a  race 
to  obtain  it,  though  the  obtaining  may  be  fifty  years 
after  the  strivers  are  dead." 

[291] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

Now  in  our  time  only  one  other  writer  has  ex 
pressed  this  idea  with  equal  force.  And  that  writer 
is  Mr.  William  Butler  Yeats.  He  has  written  in  an 
essay:  "Tragic  art,  passionate  art,  .  .  .  the  con- 
founder  of  understanding,  moves  us  by  setting  us 
to  reverie,  by  alluring  us  almost  to  the  intensity  of 
trance."  So  we  find  the  Irish  and  the  English 
writer  guided  by  one  impulse  and  by  one  convic 
tion.  And  the  result  is  that  considering  this,  and 
considering  also  the  Celtic  idiom  which  seemingly 
comes  so  naturally  from  the  lips  of  Mr.  Masefield, 
Englishman  though  he  be,  in  his  lyrics,  in  his  poetic 
dramas,  and  in  many  of  the  stories  in  "A  Mainsail 
Haul,"  we  are  tempted  to  believe  that  the  Irish 
literary  movement  has  stretched  a  shadowy  arm 
across  the  channel  and  laid  its  potent  spell  upon  a 
man  of  Saxon  blood.  And  to  this  theory  Mase- 
field's  close  friendship  with  William  Butler  Yeats 
lends  color. 

But  there  are  flaws  in  this  theory.  One  of  them 
is  that  Masefield  was  writing  in  this  manner  before 
he  met  Yeats,  before,  indeed,  the  Irish  literary 
movement  had  attracted  much  attention  outside  of 
its  own  home.  Another  flaw  is,  that  this  idea  of  the 
nobility,  one  might  almost  say,  of  the  loveliness  of 
tragedy,  while  it  is  in  our  time  more,  Irish  than 
[292] 


JOHN  MASEFIELD 

English,  was  held  by  the  English  dramatists  and 
poets  of  centuries  ago — Marlowe,  for  instance,  and 
Webster  and  Shakespeare  himself.  The  very  ear 
liest  English  poets  selected  tragic  themes  as  a 
matter  of  course.  Which  of  the  great  old  ballads  is 
without  at  least  one  bloody  murder?  Furthermore, 
the  modern  Irish-English  idiom  is  to  a  great  extent 
the  idiom  of  England  some  centuries  ago.  There 
are  rhymes  in  Shakespeare  and  even  in  Pope  which 
show  that  what  we  consider  Irish  mispronuncia 
tions  of  English  are  simply  English  pronunciations 
that  have  been  carried  through  the  ages  unchanged 
— the  "ay"  sound  for  "ea"  is  an  example  of  that. 
"Our  gracious  Anne,  whom  the  three  realms  obey, 
does  sometimes  counsel  take,  and  sometimes  tea." 
Chaucerian  scholars  say  that  the  Wife  of  Bath 
talked  what  we  would  call  Irish  dialect.  Now, 
John  Masefield's  literary  idols  belong  not  to  his 
own  generation  or  that  immediately  preceding  it 
but  to  the  early  days  of  English  letters.  His  favor 
ite  poem,  he  has  told  me,  is  Chaucer's  "Ballad  of 
Good  Counsel."  This  reading  has  affected  his 
style  and  it  has  affected  also  his  thought,  to  the 
strengthening  of  the  first  and  the  deepening  of  the 
second. 

There  has  been  much  said  and  written  about 

[298] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

Masefield's  romantic  youth — about  his  experiences 
before  the  mast  and  behind  the  bar.  There  was  a 
tendency  during  his  tour  of  the  United  States  in 
the  early  spring  of  1916  to  regard  him  as  very  much 
of  a  self-made  man,  to  marvel  at  the  miracle  of 
genius  which  turned  a  bartender-sailor  into  a  great 
poet.  But  the  fact  of  the  matter  is  that  Masefield 
is  essentially  of  the  literary  type,  a  man  who  might 
readily  have  supported  himself  by  school-teaching, 
journalism,  or  some  other  unromantic  trade,  but 
deliberately  selected  colorful  and  exciting  occupa 
tions.  No  one  can  talk  to  him  and  retain  the  idea 
that  Masefield  is  a  "sailor-poet"  or  a  "bartender- 
poet."  He  is  an  educated  English  gentleman,  very 
thoroughly  a  man  of  letters,  who  has  had  the  good 
fortune  to  add  to  his  treasury  of  experience  by 
travels  in  strange  places  and  among  strange  peo 
ple. 

Masefield's  first  important  romantic  experience, 
however,  was  undergone  at  a  time  when  the  poet 
was  so  young  that  it  can  scarcely  have  been  the 
result  of  his  own  volition.  Born  in  1874  at  Led- 
bury,  in  the  west  of  England,  he  was  indentured  to 
a  captain  in  the  English  merchant  marine  at  the 
age  of  fourteen  years.  A  fourteen-year-old  boy  on 
shipboard  generally  learns  to  hate  passionately  and 
[294] 


JOHN  MASEFIELD 

consistently  the  sea  and  all  that  is  associated  with 
it.  And  it  would  not  be  strictly  true  to  say  that 
Masefield  gained  from  this  early  adventure  a  love 
of  the  sea.  Rather  he  then  came  under  the  spell 
of  the  sea,  a  spell  from  which  he  has  never  escaped. 
He  has  not  that  sentimental  affection  for  the  sea 
which  inspires  the  life-on-the-ocean-waves'  verse 
written  by  landsmen  who  know  Neptune  only  by 
week-end  visits  in  the  summer  time.  He  has  been 
in  the  power  of  the  sea  more  than  it  is  altogether 
safe  for  so  sensitive  a  spirit  to  be.  He  seems 
haunted  by  the  sea;  in  those  of  his  writings  which 
in  theme  are  least  related  to  the  sea  the  reader  finds 
that  again  and  again  the  figures  and  comparisons 
are  drawn  from  the  poet's  memory  of  days  when 
above  and  beyond  him  were  nothing  but  water  and 
sky.  Not  even  Algernon  Charles  Swinburne  was 
so  much  influenced  by  the  sea  as  Masefield  has 
been. 

It  is  true  that  Masefield  has  given  more  beauti 
ful  expression  to  love  for  the  sea  than  any  other 
poet  of  our  time — "Sea-Fever"  alone  would  estab 
lish  him  as  the  sea's  true  lover.  But  also  Masefield 
has  expressed  with  terrible  force  the  cruelty  of  the 
sea,  its  brutal  and  terrifying  energy,  its  soul-shat 
tering  melancholy.  And  nowhere  in  English  liter- 

[295] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

ature  is  it  possible  to  find  more  vivid  pictures  of  the 
bitter  hardship  of  a  seaman's  life  than  in  the  "Salt 
Water  Poems  and  Ballads."  Masefield  is  not  elec 
tive  nor  selective  in  his  attitude  toward  the  sea;  his 
feeling  toward  the  sea  seems  almost  an  obsession. 
The  sea  is  not  subject  to  his  genius;  it  speaks 
through  him. 

Masefield's  life  on  shipboard  did  more  than  put 
him  in  the  power  of  the  sea,  it  began  his  interest  in 
the  lives  and  thoughts  of  simple  hard-working  peo 
ple.  And  this  interest  has  never  left  him.  It  is 
true  that  he  occasionally  gives  us  something  like 
"The  Faithful"  or  "Philip,  the  King"  or  "The 
Tragedy  of  Pompey  the  Great."  But  his  heart  is 
in  poems  like  "Dauber"  and  "The  Everlasting 
Mercy"  and  in  stories  like  "A  Deal  of  Cards,"  in 
which  he  writes  of  unsophisticated  people  who  feel 
strongly  and  do  not  conceal  their  emotions. 

It  was,  perhaps,  because  of  a  real  sense  of  the 
value  and  interest  of  life  among  simple  people  that 
Masefield  made  the  selection  he  did  of  work  to  sup 
port  himself  during  his  first  visit  to  the  United 
States.  In  Connecticut  he  was  a  farm  laborer,  in 
Yonkers  he  was  a  hand  in  a  carpet-factory  and  in 
New  York  City  he  was  a  sort  of  helper  to  the  bar 
tender  in  the  old  Colonial  hotel  on  Sixth  Avenue 
[296] 


JOHN  MASEFIELD 

near  Jefferson  Market  Court.  This  hotel  is  still  in 
the  possession  of  the  family  who  employed  Mase- 
field  and  their  recollections  of  him  are  highly  enter 
taining.  The  writer  once  asked  the  eldest  son  of  the 
family  if  Masefield  had  written  anything  during  the 
days  of  his  employment  there.  He  had  not,  it 
seemed,  and  he  was  associated  in  the  minds  of  the 
family  with  the  art  of  poetry,  for  one  reason  only — 
that  being  that  he  used  to  sing  to  the  fretful  baby, 
holding  it  in  his  lap  as  he  sat  in  a  rocking-chair  in 
the  kitchen,  waiting  for  his  employer's  wife  to  serve 
his  dinner. 

When  Masefield  went  back  to  England  he  went 
to  work  as  a  clerk  in  a  London  office.  He  was 
writing  now,  putting  on  paper  the  pictures  that 
had  been  etched  in  his  brain  and  in  his  heart  during 
his  wander  years.  Now  he  perceived  the  deep  and 
abiding  beauty  and  the  deep  and  abiding  tragedy 
(to  Masefield  they  were  the  same)  of  his  expe 
riences.  How  this  knowledge  came  to  him  he  has 
told  in  twelve  immensely  sincere  lines.  E.  A. 
Robinson  has  said  that  poetry  is  a  language  which 
tells,  by  means  of  a  more  or  less  emotional  reaction, 
that  which  cannot  be  stated  in  prose.  And  there 
fore  it  is  better  to  let  Masefield  tell  this  in  poetry 

[297] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

than  to  attempt  to  paraphrase  it.    He  wrote,  by 
way  of  preface  to  "A  Mainsail  Haul" : 

"I  yarned  with  ancient  shipmen  beside  the  galley 

range, 
And  some  were  fond  of  women,  but  all  were  fond 

of  change; 
They  sang  their  quavering  chanties,  all  in  a  fo'c's'le 

drone, 
And  I  was  finally  suited,  if  I  had  only  known. 

I  rested  in  an  ale-house  that  had  a  sanded  floor, 
Where  seamen  sat  a-drinking  and  chalking  up  the 

score ; 
They  yarned  of  ships  and  mermaids,  of  topsail 

sheets  and  slings, 
But  I  was  discontented;  I  looked  for  better  things. 

I  heard  a  drunken  fiddler  in  Billy  Lee's  saloon, 
I  brooked  an  empty  belly  with  thinking  of  the  tune ; 
I  swung  the  doors  disgusted  as  drunkards  rose  to 

dance, 
And  now  I  know  the  music  was  life  and  life's  ro 


mance." 


Masefield's  work  soon  attracted  the  attention  of 
William  Butler  Yeats,  John  Galsworthy,  Sturge 
Moore,  and  other  English  men  of  letters,  and 
largely  through  their  efforts  was  brought  to  the  at- 
[298] 


JOHN  MASEFIELD 

tention  of  the  public.  American  readers  first  be 
came  aware  of  him  through  the  publication  of  two 
long  poems — "The  Everlasting  Mercy"  and  "The 
Widow  in  the  Bye  Street."  To  say  that  these  were 
long  narrative,  poems,  dealing  with  intensely  tragic 
and  dramatic  events  in  the  life  of  the  British  poor, 
is  not  to  describe  them  adequately.  They  were  a 
poetry  new  to  our  generation.  They  showed  an 
intimate  knowledge  of  the  lives  of  the  poor, 
especially  of  the  criminal  poor,  not  to  be  found  in 
the  amiable  poems  of  Mr.  W.  W.  Gibson  and  sim 
ilar  socialistic  dilettantes.  They  were  not  socialis 
tic  in  message;  rather  they  were  individualistic. 
Saul  Kane  was  not  a  drunkard  because  of  economic 
pressure;  Jimmy's  siren  lived  an  evil  life  merely 
because  she  was  evil,  not  as  a  result  of  the  injustice 
of  man-made  laws  or  anything  else  of  the  sort.  So 
precedents  were  violated  and  Masefield  scored  a 
success  of  sensation.  The  savage  colloquialisms  of 
the  poems,  their  violent  emotionalism,  their  melo 
drama — these  things  brought  them  to  the  attention 
of  a  large  number  of  people  not  ordinarily  inter 
ested  in  the  work  of  new  poets,  and  thus  an 
audience  was  prepared  for  the  poet's  later  and  more 
important  work. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  work  published 

[299] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

later  was  more  important.  There  were  crudities 
in  these  two  narrative  poems  which  seemed  to  be 
put  there  deliberately,  in  order  to  startle  and  shock 
the  reader.  Masefield  followed  these  poems  with 
other  poems  in  the  same  manner  done  with  much 
greater  technical  skill  and  with  a  more  convincing 
sincerity.  "Dauber"  and  "Biography"  and  the 
"Daffodil  Fields"  are  more  likely  to  be  read  by 
the  next  generation  than  are  "The  Widow  in  the 
Bye  Street"  and  "The  Everlasting  Mercy,"  in  spite 
of  the  fact  that  the  last  mentioned  poem  was 
awarded  the  Edward  de  Polignac  prize  of  $500  by 
the  Royal  Society  of  Literature. 

It  is  hard  to  tell  just  what  form  Masefield  will 
finally  select  for  the  expression  of  his  genius.  He 
has  written  ballads,  lyrics,  plays,  novels,  short- 
stories,  even  histories,  and  all  these  forms  he  has 
molded  to  his  own  use.  At  the  time  of  writing  he 
is  in  France  actively  engaged  in  Red  Cross  work, 
and  has  begun  to  send  to  the  magazines  stories  of 
the  things  that  he  has  seen  which  entitle  him  to  be 
called  a  great  reporter.  The  quest  for  beauty  has 
been  and  is  his  ruling  passion — he  is  splendidly  ex 
plicit  on  this  subject  in  the  magnificent  sequence  of 
Shakespearean  sonnets  printed  in  "Good  Friday 
and  Other  Poems."  He  has  searched  for  this 
[300] 


JOHN  MASEFIELD 

beauty  on  the  boundless  sea,  in  noisy  barrooms,  in 
English  meadows,  in  the  streets  of  New  York.  He 
is  seeking  it  now,  we  may  believe,  in  the  tragedy 
and  heroism  of  the  battlefield.  And  always,  his 
sonnets  tell  us,  it  is  evasive  and  very  distant,  be-  • 
cause  its  real  dwelling  place  is  his  own  soul. 


[301] 


WILLIAM  VAUGHN  MOODY 

(1869-1910) 

WILLIAM  VAUGHN  MOODY  was 
throughout  his  life  regarded  as  the  most 
promising  of  the  younger  American  poets.  And 
when  he  died  in  1810  most  critics  mourned  for  the 
unwritten  lyrics  and  poetic  dramas  of  which  Amer 
ican  literature  had  thus  been  robbed;  they  men 
tioned  the  author  as  a  gifted  youth,  whom  fate  had 
removed  at  the  beginning  of  a  splendid  career. 

To  a  certain  extent  this  attitude  was  a  tribute 
to  the  youthful  spirit  of  William  Vaughn  Moody, 
to  his  vivacity,  energy  and  cheerfulness.  But  it 
was  chiefly  a  new  illustration  of  the  fact  that  now 
adays  poets  flower  late  in  the  season.  Moody  was 
forty-one  years  old  when  he  died — and  there  was 
a  time  when  the  poet  of  forty  was  considered  well 
past  the  meridian  of  his  genius.  Most  of  the  great 
poets  established  their  fame  before  they  were  thirty 
years  old — Keats  and  Shelley  died  at  twenty-five 
and  twenty-nine  respectively.  But  nowadays  the 
[302] 


WILLIAM  VAUGHN  MOODY 

poet  of  forty-five  is  still  called  young  and  the  poet 
of  thirty  our  kind  critics  consider  a  precocious  in 
fant. 

As  a  matter  of  stern  fact,  it  is  doubtful  that 
American  literature  has  really  lost  much  by 
Moody's  death.  He  wrote  "Gloucester  Moors" 
and  the  "Ode  in  Time  of  Hesitation"  and  "The 
Faith  Healer."  The  conscientious  student  of  his 
work  cannot  escape  the  conviction  that  in  these  he 
gave  the  world  all  that  he  really  had  to  give.  Of 
course  he  would  have  written  more — nature  lyrics, 
poems  on  political  and  sociological  questions,  poeti 
cal  dramas  dealing  with  philosophical  themes,  prose 
plays  of  modern  American  life.  But  toward  the 
end  of  his  brief  life  his  work  was  not  gaining  in 
force.  Readers  of  "The  Death  of  Eve"  have  little 
sorrow  over  the  poet's  failure  to  complete  this  play 
— the  first  two  members  of  the  trilogy  which  it  was 
to  conclude  are  nobly  phrased,  but  they  are  so 
cloudy  in  thought  and  weak  in  dramatic  construc 
tion  that  they  do  their  author's  fame  little  service. 
Prometheus,  Pandora,  Deucalion,  Eve,  Cain, 
Raphael,  and  Michael,  angels  and  archangels, 
thrones,  dominions  and  powers,  were  characters 
too  mighty  for  the  talent  of  this  poet,  who  could 
handle  adequately  enough  a  problem  of  contempo- 

[303] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

rary  politics  or  draw  quaint  lessons  from  the  caged 
beasts  in  a  menagerie. 

Perhaps  the  coldness  which  annoys  some  readers 
of  Moody's  poems,  the  sense  of  aloofness  from  the 
common  experience  of  mankind,  the  artificiality 
which  mars  such  expressions  of  sympathy  for 
humanity  as  are  intended  in  "Gloucester  Moors," 
are  things  for  which  it  is  unjust  to  blame  the  poet. 
His  friend,  John  M.  Manly,  wrote  in  the  preface 
to  his  "Poems  and  Plays":  "He  was  an  epicure  of 
life,  a  voluptuary  of  the  whole  range  of  physical, 
mental,  and  spiritual  perfections."  But  in  Moody's 
poetry  we  find  more  of  the  mind  than  of  the  heart ; 
we  feel  that  we  are  in  the  presence  of  a  charming 
and  cultured  personality,  but  we  have  no  feeling  of 
intimacy  with  the  writer. 

"Of  thine  own  tears  thy  song  must  tears  beget," 
wrote  Rossetti.  "O  singer,  magic  mirror  hast  thou 
none  save  thine  own  manifest  heart."  And  a  greater 
poet  than  Rossetti  exclaimed,  "Ah,  must  (Designer 
Infinite!)  Thou  char  the  wood  ere  thou  canst  limn 
with?"  A  similar  thought  was  in  Horace's  mind 
when  in  the  Ars  Poetica  he  said,  "if  you  wish  me  to 
week  you  must  first  weep  yourself." 

Well,  few  tears  are  drawn  by  Moody's  poems,  nor 
did  many  tears  go  into  their  making.  His  wood 
[304] 


WILLIAM  VAUGHN  MOODY 

was  not  charred.  But  he  was  a  conscientious  and 
accomplished  artist,  doing  the  best  he  could  with 
the  powers  that  were  his.  His  work  is  thoughtful, 
imaginative,  and  well-wrought,  his  "Great  Divide" 
is  destined  to  periodic  revivals,  and  the  best  of  his 
lyrics  are  sure  of  a  place  in  the  anthologies. 

William  Vaughn  Moody  was  born  in  Spencer, 
Indiana,  on  July  8th,  1869.  He  was  the  son  of  a 
prosperous  retired  steamboat  captain.  In  1871  the 
family  moved  to  New  Albany,  on  the  Ohio  River. 
The  elder  Moody  died  in  1886.  William  Vaughn 
Moody  went  to  Riverside  Academy  and  entered 
Harvard  in  1889,  being  then  twenty  years  old.  In 
his  senior  year  he  went  abroad  with  a  wealthy  fam 
ily  as  tutor  to  their  son.  During  the  trip  he  made 
a  walking  tour  of  the  Black  Forest  and  Switzerland 
with  a  party  of  friends,  including  Norman  Hap- 
good.  He  also  spent  some  time  in  Greece  and  Italy. 

He  returned  to  Harvard  to  study  for  his  master's 
degree  and  stayed  on  as  an  instructor  in  English. 
In  the  autumn  of  1895  he  went  to  the  University  of 
Chicago  as  instructor  in  English,  reaching  the  rank 
of  assistant  professor  before  his  departure  eight 
years  later.  His  life  at  the  University  of  Chicago 
seems  to  have  been  rather  leisurely.  It  was  varied 
by  journeys  abroad  and  bicycle  tours  in  Illinois  and 

[305] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

Wisconsin.  Swimming,  bicycling,  golf,  tennis, 
walking,  and  mountain-climbing  are  mentioned  by 
Mr.  Manly  as  Moody's  favorite  sports,  and  it  is  not 
to  be  wondered  that  he  had  little  time  for  writing, 
however  unexacting  his  academic  duties  may  have 
been. 

Although  his  connection  with  the  University  of 
Chicago  did  not  cease  until  later,  he  taught  no 
classes  after  1902.  He  did,  however,  do  a  certain 
amount  of  work  academic  in  character,  editing  some 
editions  of  the  classics  and  collaborating  with  his 
friend  Robert  M.  Lovett  in  a  "History  of  English 
Literature."  He  first  became  known  to  the  general 
public  by  the  successful  presentation  of  his  prose 
play,  "The  Great  Divide."  He  died  in  Colorado 
Springs  on  the  seventeenth  of  October,  1910.  A 
few  months  before  his  death  he  married  Miss  Har 
riet  C.  Brainerd. 

It  is  interesting  to  trace  the  influences  in  Moody's 
work.  He  was  very  thoroughly  a  man  of  books, 
and  some  critics  complain  that  there  is  more  ink  than 
blood  in  the  veins  of  the  people  of  whom  he  writes. 
Certainly  it  is  possible  to  find  traces  of  his  reading 
on  nearly  every  page  that  he  wrote.  The  lovely 
fourth  stanza  of  "Gloucester  Moors"  is  Coleridge; 
"Faded  Pictures"  is  Browning  at  his  worst;  and 
[306] 


WILLIAM  VAUGHN  MOODY 

"The  Daguerreotype"  is  a  deliberate  effort  to  imi 
tate  the  irregular  ode-form  of  Coventry  Patmore. 
And  of  course  "Heart's  Wildflower"  and  "A  Dia 
logue  in  Purgatory,"  like  the  lyrics  in  "The  Masque 
of  Judgment,"  are  a  Chicago  version  of  Rossetti. 

In  his  prose  plays  we  find  Moody  writing  with  an 
energy  which  he  seldom  exhibited  in  his  poetry.  Not 
in  Jerome  K.  Jerome's  "The  Passing  of  the  Third 
Floor  Back,"  nor  in  Charles  Harm  Kennedy's  "The 
Servant  in  the  House,"  is  the  idea  of  the  benefi 
cent  effect  of  a  powerful  and  virtuous  nature  more 
plausibly  presented  than  in  "The  Faith  Healer." 
And  Moody  obtained  his  effect  more  honestly  than 
did  Jerome  and  Kennedy;  his  faith-healer  is  merely 
a  faith-healer  to  the  end  of  the  play,  there  is  no 
suggestion  that  he  is  more  than  human.  In  many 
respects  "The  Faith  Healer"  is  Moody's  most  im 
portant  work.  There  is  more  poetry  in  its  prose 
than  in  all  his  poetic  dramas  put  together.  When 
Michaelis  makes  love  to  Rhoda  and  tells  the  story 
of  his  childhood  home,  when  Beeler  describes  the 
picture  of  Pan  and  the  Pilgrim,  and  when  Uncle 
Abe  chants  his  prophecies  and  visions,  then  there 
is  real  poetry — poetry  not  unlike  some  of  the  best 
passages  in  Synge's  plays.  The  "strange  mounting 
sing-song"  of  Uncle  Abe's  speech  evidently  was  the 

[307] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

inspiration  of  the  best  parts  of  Mr.  Ridgley  Tor- 
rence's  "The  Rider  of  Dreams." 

"The  Great  Divide"  has  been  magnificently 
acted,  but  it  is  inferior  in  every  respect  to  "The 
Faith  Healer."  Its  theme — the  contrast  between 
the  Puritan  spirit  which  Moody  considered  typical 
of  the  Eastern  States,  and  the  generous  paganism 
which  he  thought  characteristically  Western, — 
might  be,  and  probably  will  be,  the  basis  of  an  im 
portant  play.  But  there  never  was  a  New  Eng- 
lander  remotely  resembling  Ruth  Jordan,  there 
never  was  a  Westerner  remotely  resembling 
Stephen  Ghent.  Hero  and  heroine,  or  villain  and 
villainess,  or  whatever  they  are  supposed  to  be,  have 
actuality,  it  is  true — the  actuality  of  figures  seen  in 
a  nightmare.  And  the  other  characters  in  the  play 
have  no  actuality  whatsoever.  And  the  author's 
total  lack  of  humor  never  injured  his  work  more 
than  in  this  play.  It  is  painful  to  see  situations  es 
sentially  humorous  made  banal  and  dull  by  the 
author's  obtuseness.  If  only  the  idea  had  occurred 
to  Bernard  Shaw  instead  of  to  William  Vaughn 
Moody! 

Perhaps  one  reason  why  "The  Great  Divide," 
convincing  enough  when  well  acted,  is  a  lamentable 
thing  on  the  printed  page  is  because  it  is  an  attempt 
[308] 


WILLIAM  VAUGHN  MOODY 

to  prove  a  theory.  Moody  was  a  Puritan,  througK 
and  through,  and  like  all  modern  literary  Puritans 
he  was  desperately  ashamed  of  his  Puritanism.  He 
glorified  what  he  thought  to  be  the  pagan  ideal,  and 
in  "The  Great  Divide"  he  wanted  to  show  that  the 
large  acceptances  of  Ghent  were  nobler  than  the 
austere  negations  of  Ruth.  But  paganism  and 
Puritanism  are  nothing  but  terms,  almost  meaning 
less  from  much  repetition,  and  "The  Great  Divide" 
is  a  play  of  terms,  of  symbols,  of  lay  figures.  And 
the  only  things  that  it  proves  are  Moody's  total  in 
ability  to  understand  paganism  and  his  reluctant 
but  inevitable  sympathy  with  Puritanism. 

It  was  his  Puritanism  that  made  Moody  try  to 
stimulate  the  conscience  of  his  land  by  means  of 
"An  Ode  in  Time  of  Hesitation,"  his  best  sustained 
long  poem,  and  his  most  passionate  utterance.  It 
was  the  Puritan  who  wrote  "On  a  Soldier  Fallen  in 
the  Philippines."  It  was  the  Puritan  who  wrote 
"The  Brute."  And  I  think  that  it  was  the  Puritan 
who  wrote  "Gloucester  Moors."  A  pagan,  such  as 
Moody  desired  to  be,  would  not  have  worried  about 
the  "souls  distraught  in  the  hold,"  nor  would  he  have 
worried  over  the  fact  that  some  of  the  crew  had  over 
eaten.  Also,  a  pagan  would  have  enjoyed  the  love- 

[309] 


FUGITIVE  PIECES 

liness  of  the  wild  geranium  and  the  barberry  with 
out  asking: 

"Who  has  given  to  me  this  sweet, 
And  given  my  brother  dust  to  eat? 
And  when  will  his  wage  come  in?" 

These  things  are  manifestations  of  that  Puritan 
characteristic  known  as  "the  New  England  con 
science" — the  cause  in  recent  years  of  many  rather 
frantic  efforts  at  social  and  economic  and  philo 
sophical  readjustment.  Mr.  John  M.  Manly  says 
that  "Gloucester  Moors"  is  "a  favorite  poem  with 
workers  in  the  slums," — a  significant  and  startling 
observation. 

Moody*  s  Puritanism  gives  strength  to  many  of 
his  poems,  but  in  others  it  produces  strange  incon 
sistencies  and  evasions.  It  helped  him  to  write 
"The  Brute" — a  strong  and  sincere  poem.  But  it 
caused  him  to  fail  ridiculously  in  "A  Dialogue  in 
Purgatory,"  in  "Good-Friday  Night,"  and  in 
"Song  Flower  and  Poppy."  In  the  second  half  of 
the  last-named  poem  we  come  upon  the  root  of  the 
matter — Moody's  complete  failure  to  understand 
any  religious  system,  any  philosophy  of  life,  more 
warm  and  comprehensive  than  his  own  Puritanism. 
He  rebelled  against  this  Puritanism,  yet  he  could 
[310] 


WILLIAM  VAUGHN  MOODY 

not  escape  it.  He  sought  vaguely  after  paganism, 
whereas  he  could  no  more  have  been  a  Bacchic 
reveller  than  he  could  have  been  a  Druid.  In  spite  of 
his  reading  of  early  French  and  Italian  romances, 
he  failed  utterly  to  see  the  generous  glories  of 
the  Middle  Ages,  when  all  that  was  noble  and 
beautiful  in  paganism  was  made  a  part  of  the  rich 
est  civilization  the  world  has  yet  known.  He 
thought  of  intellectual  development  and  spiritual 
freedom  as  things  beginning  about  1517 — and 
naturally  this  hampered  him  when  he  wrote  about 
Michael,  Raphael,  Azaziel,  Eve,  Jubal,  and  Cain. 
A  longer  residence  in  Italy  might  have  given  him 
a  more  liberal  culture  and  a  spiritual  philosophy 
generous  without  being  pagan,  pure  without  being 
Puritanical.  And  therefore  the  critics  who  said 
that  a  poet  of  promise  died  in  1910  may  have  told 
the  truth.  A  broader  culture  and  more  extensive 
human  sympathies  would  have  enabled  this  deft  art 
ist  in  words  to  give  to  the  world  a  message  of  the 
kind  it  always  welcomes — to  express  beautifully  the 
beauty  that  is  truth. 


[311] 


14  DAY  USE  ED 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below, 

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Tel.  No.  642-3405 

Renewals  may  be  made  4  days  prior  to  date  due.  

Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 

r  i  . • -' 

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